


Late Last Night

by Anonymous



Series: Your Love Glows in the Dark [1]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Age Difference, Anal Sex, Blow Jobs, Body Image, Developing Relationship, Dick Pics, Filmmaking, Hair Kink, Hollywood, Interracial Relationship, Long-Distance Relationship, M/M, Masturbation, Mirror Sex, Older Little-Known Male Rock Singer/His Younger #1 Fan who is a Famous Male Actor - Freeform, Original Female Characters of Color - Freeform, Porn with Feelings, Punk Rock, Restricted Diet, Sexting, Texting, Treat, casual/improvised D/s dynamics, original male character of color - Freeform, queercore
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-12
Updated: 2021-03-12
Packaged: 2021-03-19 11:47:39
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 30,229
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29998884
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: When hot young Hollywood action star Eddie Tarek meets his longtime homocore punk hero Len Downing, their chemistry is instantaneous and irresistible. The night should be nothing more than a welcome break in work routine for them both, but afterward they can't stop thinking about each other.One is touring the US, while the other's stuck on set in the middle of nowhere, so exploring their attraction, let alone getting to know each other, will require both creativity and flexibility (and maybe some more courage than either could have expected).
Relationships: Original Male Character/Original Male Character
Series: Your Love Glows in the Dark [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2206752
Comments: 3
Kudos: 6
Collections: Five Figure Fanwork Exchange 2020





	1. Green Room

**Author's Note:**

  * For [MoonGoddex](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MoonGoddex/gifts).



> MoonGoddex: Thank you for pinch hitting!
> 
> Titles (of fic and series) from the Fifth Column songs.
> 
> This would not exist without the sustained and brilliant efforts of **L** , a beta to be named later who is so much more than a beta.

Time on the road is a binary. 

He's in one of two possible states: on-stage, in the light, and awake; or off-stage, in the dark, sleeping. It's better that way, simpler. 

Life back home is a mess, an endless run of busy days over and over, errands and phone calls, deliveries and returns. Nothing special about any of those tasks, and they need to get done, again and again. 

But out on the road—those problems evaporate. 

Maybe he does, too. A little. 

He'll find the particles of himself and push them back together, some kind of way. He always does.  


* * *

Eddie wouldn't say he's lucky, not in so many words. He believes in hard work and making the most of the opportunities that come along.

Word around set is that the boom crane is out of commission. They'll be shutting down production until they can get a replacement delivered and installed. That's just rumor, though.

He's still sitting here in a make-up chair with Lana's hands in his hair. 

He knows a good indication of having 'made it' is getting to choose someone with her expertise to help him out. She's already made quick work of his fro, clipping the split ends and braiding it down to his scalp, and that's been worth every penny alone. 

"Hey!" He squirms a little when her crochet hook skates across his scalp and she twists one of the extensions she's tying in a little harder than strictly necessary.

Lana just clucks her tongue and smirks at him in the mirror.

There's a rhythm to filming movies like this, fests of ultra-machismo, constant violence and deadened affect. Catchphrases substitute for emotions, costumes identify whom to trust. All of this has very little to do with _acting_. More than anything, he's a chess piece, moved here, delivered there, dressed up and conscious of the angle of the lights and the marks on the floor. He flexes his muscles, wields a katana, maybe tries to slip a little heartfelt sincerity into the next bitten-off line. Yet it's work that he has come to enjoy, for what it is. It's certainly better than musicals. Though the reliance on choreography is pretty much the same, really.

When his new PA arrives to make the news about shut-down official, for a moment Eddie has no idea what to do with that information. A whole half-day and evening to himself falls so far outside the routine established over the last couple weeks that he's honestly baffled. 

Besides, the shoot's in an old Rust Belt city on the near side of nowhere. Wherever they are, it's rural enough that the local paper his PA gives him only comes out twice a week. Still, there has to be a restaurant around, a movie to see.

"Don't mess with these," Lana tells him and taps on the loc that's in her hand. "Whatever fun you get up to, I'm not doing this level of install on you again this week." 

"Yes, ma'am." He salutes her as he reaches for the paper's arts and lifestyle section. 

"I have a list of possible activities," Ms. Condon says. He has to remind himself that it's kind of part of a PA's job to be ready for anything. 

He gives the pages a quick scan. Ms. Condon is nice enough, but he's sure that anything she thinks is fun will bore him to death. It'll be murder-mystery dinner theatre or a lecture on bird migrations. 

Just when he's about to give up, resign himself to cable TV and an early bedtime, he sees the ad, postage-stamp square with bold sans-serif letters in a page tiled with them for concerts.

Len Downing's playing tonight.

Eddie double-checks the date with Ms. Condon — yes — and the venue with Lana — she snorts and reminds him she's from Yonkers. Ms. Condon confirms that the concert isn't too far away.

On second thought, he's eager to take advantage of an unexpected opportunity, he just hadn’t really thought one would come along anytime soon with the amount of work that needs to get done.

Maybe Eddie _is_ lucky.

* * *

Len's fine. Honestly.

Rather, there's no reason to not be fine. Soundcheck went great, the band is tighter than ever, he has nothing to worry about. They've been on the road for a little over a week, but they rehearsed hard for nearly a month prior. They know each other and the set cold.

Even without a reason, something feels different about today. He's been having a hard time putting his finger on it, and it's not a bad feeling, but it keeps him pacing the rickety deck built out the back of the club, swinging his arms, clapping, trying to keep the blood flowing. 

The afternoon air is chilly, not quite spring. The river below sounds like birds arguing. It isn't nearly as picturesque as Len would prefer — everything down there is brown and soaked with melted snow, while the water is a deeper amber and frothy as poorly-pulled ale.

Appearing here rather than forty-five minutes down the highway in Syracuse was Len's call. He's known Bradley since art school. When Bradley came into this place, it wormed its way into Len's heart from the first time he played here. He's always made it a point to book here since, whatever band he was in at the time.

Bradley's grown daughter sticks her head out the door to check on Len and offers him a drag on her wax cartridge. He accepts gratefully. 

He's not nervous but he's not calm, either. 

Then the THC hits and he's left reeling, like he just inhaled three joints' worth all at once. He sits down heavily on the deck. The bruise-lavender and gray sky above whirls, dragging naked black branches along. The river hoots and accelerates to race Len's own pulse.

He's laughing. He has to. Only he would be so fucking old and out-of-touch for this to happen.

He'll sober up with plenty of time before the doors open, but just now, shivering in the dusk, all he can do is heave for breath and giggle helplessly.

So much for the "wiser" part that's supposed to accompany getting older.

* * *

In the back of a studio car, on his way to see a punk legend live, Eddie feels like he's getting away with something. He can't remember the last time he went to a concert. Probably something at the Garden or Staples Center, and definitely for reasons other than music. He toured one summer with the cast of _Homeroom Hop_ , playing arenas packed with tweens and toddlers. Hearing those terrible songs over and over again put him off live music for a good long time.

He drums his fingers on his knee, and checks his reflection. It floats, scraps of his face, above the dark streaking past. The driver says they're making good time, but everything's dark out there, a two-lane highway unlit except by passing cars. Who knows if this guy's bullshitting or not. 

At any rate, Eddie looks good, but not 'on-set' good. Within the realm of reality good, he hopes. Ms. Condon has good taste and really came through for him, especially given the short notice: Nice pair of selvage-denim jeans, a soft cotton button down shirt in a faded no-color pastel that makes his skin just about glow, a rum-colored canvas jacket that looks money'd but not expensive. 

He didn't really know what it meant to look nicer-than-passable until it was a bit too late. Once, someone got a picture of him looking like a normal guy and it went totally viral: he was hungover, heading out to rehearsal with mustard on his collar and his fly at half-mast. Ever since, he at least tries to look like he's successful, stylish, or at least got some semblance of shit together.

Often, that means lying, he thinks as he admires the boots he borrowed from wardrobe. The thick sculpted soles dwindling up into lean and tight lines around the ankles are Italian made, likely 'by hand'. Prada or Versace or something like it, worth thousands. The wardrobe guy told him they had 4 pairs in his size on loan.

They're the kind of thing it'd be both embarrassing and useless to have in an actual apocalypse. On-camera, however, they mean rugged self-sufficiency with a twist of postmodern, twenty-minutes-into-the-future genderfuckery, and Eddie can't say he's against any of those things. It's just a lot like the rest of this movie, expensive trash, all aesthetic.

Yeah, he's a little cynical about this project. That's going to be something he needs to keep a lid on, even privately, especially later when the press tour kicks off.

There’s upsides, yes. It's excellent money for dressing up and carrying a katana, it does have a bit more 'bite' than normal. It might just help cement him as A Different Kind of Leading Man, or whatever the publicist at the agency uses to pitch him to another men's magazine. Who knows? 

"We should be back on the road by 11," Ms. Condon says from the front seat as they pull into the parking lot. 

Eddie shrugs. "Set might run late, though."

"Regardless," she says. "Wait here while I go find the manager." 

It takes everything he has to let her go, to sit tight while she does whatever magic she thinks will come out of finding the owner. 

He stretches again and tips his head against the cool glass. Still, his sister used to be his assistant, succeeding his mom after he turned 18 and _Homeroom Hop_ finally wrapped for good, but it's important she goes back to school. It's the least he can do, make sure one of them is set up for a good career that actually makes a difference in the world. 

He misses Renee; his mom didn't raise either of them to ask for the manager or act like they were better than anyone else. 

Condon is the studio's idea of a good assistant for him, a babysitter that somehow treads that line between a good friend that didn't sit at your table in high school and a middle school vice-principal. 

Technically she has to listen to him, but he's not into flexing that kind of power. 

While he waits for whatever negotiation, tantrum, or money exchange to be over, he texts Renee: "she's so mean + this is all yr fault"

He grins, reading her response. > _suck it up baby boy it'll put hair on your chest_

"hope not," he types back. "that shit itches"

> _sure princess. what's she doing now?_

He gets out a quick "tell you l8r" as Ms. Condon returns. 

Her tone is acidic with disbelief, "There's no private booths, let alone a VIP area." 

For a moment, her snobbiness pisses him off, all arched eyebrows and haughtiness. Then, he reconsiders: she's worried he'll blame her for that. 

"That's okay," he offers, and while Ms. Condon doesn't relax — he doesn't think she ever does — something does shift in her expression, like the edges are being sanded down in relief. "I just want to hear some music, you know?"

She nods and snaps a wristband onto him, handing another to the driver. They walk across the gravel lot together, and Condon’s sensible wedge heels slip on the pebbles. She keeps her balance with the verve of someone who is dogmatic around keeping up their pilates routine in their hotel room. Eddie fights the urge to catch her before she falls whenever it happens. 

Inside, the place is a ramshackle warren of corners and sudden walls, narrow passages between new additions. The lighting is low, everything smells like beer, and when they finally hit the floor, people stand shoulder to shoulder, swaying in place as the warm-up band power-chords something jazzy.

The crowd stands there, most of them bobbing their heads like a secular congregation, agreeing with the pastor, swallowing it down.

"I'll get you a table," Ms. Condon shouts but he waves her off. All the tables are occupied. Their sightlines are shitty anyway. 

"Can you grab some merch for me instead?" he asks. "Couple shirts, CDs or whatever? Vinyl if they have it."

She's studying her phone, but nods. "They can also offer you a spot off-stage."

There would be less people up there, less bother and a better view to boot. Feels weird to think about that, but it's hard to turn down fresh sightlines, he has to admit. 

"That sounds great," he shouts. 

She actually smiles in response.

A couple people recognize him. Then, drawn by their enthusiasm, several more. He poses for pictures, arm around shoulders or peace sign-plus-kiss on the cheek. He does the Scarab Knight pose for a couple and signs a girl's Len Downing shirt with her eyeliner wand.

It's never _normal_ , impromptu markers and selfies on other people’s phones. He tries to stay relaxed and happy to see the enthusiasm while people get a kick out quoting his lines back to him. 

Afterward, Ms. Condon and another young woman, who he thinks he recognizes from the soundboard, lead him through a doorway to the left of the stage.

It's cramped back here, basically a wall separated from a ratty canvas curtain by about eighteen inches of space, but they've dragged an armchair from god knows where for him. 

It's a bit much, feels like an impromptu champagne room in the middle of nowhere upstate. He'd be an idiot to turn it down. 

Ms. Condon brings him a beer — disappointingly, it's nothing local, but at least the can’s well within his calorie rations and the carbs he can have today.

"I'll be in the car. Text me, or call," she tells him before she goes. "Whatever you need, let me know."

"You sure you don't want to stay?"

She grimaces a little. "Not my kind of music, sorry."

Eddie figured. It's her loss, her loss.

It's been a lonely few months since Renee moved away to school. In LA, he certainly missed her, but there were plenty of distractions. Now that he's on set for five weeks, he feels her absence acutely. There's no one always just next to him, ready to roll their eyes at a private joke or poke him until he laughs. 

Being here, alone, kind of reminds him of the time right after his dad died. Always keeping his head down, remembering his _please_ and _thank you_ , and sticking to the edges, trying to stay invisible. 

He had been such a sad little boy, growing up. Sad and a little different, weird and a little lonely, too. 

He rolls the can between his hands as he waits patiently for the show to start. The beer's getting to him, _fast_.

* * *

Onstage, Len becomes a being of noise and light. As awful as touring can be, boring and lonely and even more boring, performing is the most extraordinary joy this side of the bedroom. 

God, he missed it.

Whether he's in there or up here, he knows what to do without having to think about it; his body takes over, and he's purely present. The weed in his system has mellowed down from its hysterical peak that now he's simply that much brighter and louder — and, performing, he's always radiant and clamorous.

Behind him, Jody whales on the drums with the kind of controlled mania you'd hope to see in someone half his age, while Kevin all but throttles his bass, his face a rictus of feral focus.

Len's shin splints ache with each bounce and kick, but he can't stop. The muscle might very well be tearing from the bone, but the pain, like the weed, merely underlines and reinforces this blazing ecstasy he finds himself in. He'll pay for that later, along with his bad ankle and the persistent knot low on one hip. Just now, he's _here_ , buoyed up on the currents of sound, glowing, nearly irradiated.

This is one of the best crowds they've had yet. 

The room is shaped really strangely, the sides pinched in like an hourglass halfway between stage and front entrance. Sometimes, given a shy enough crowd, that results in playing to an empty expanse; you can't see too far past the lights, and have to take the audience's presence on faith and hints.

Tonight, however, the moshers are funnelled up right at the front while the rest of the crowd can engage without getting elbowed in the face or toes broken. As far as Len can tell, the crowd is also more diverse than it used to be. Lots of people his age, of course, but some significantly younger, too, especially down in front. 

He walks over to Jody's kit, getting a drink of water between songs. A wolf-whistle, clear and loud, launches from behind him. His eyebrows might as well go into his hairline. 

It's been a dog's age since anything like that happened. Several dogs, in fact, and it occurs to him, too late, that maybe it was ironic. Maybe they're whistling at his plumber's crack.

Faking an adjustment to his strap, he swipes his hand across his lower back. Tee's still tucked in; he's safe.

Someone's in the corner of his eye. 

In the wings, stage left, sitting cross-legged on a pile of something, a can of beer in hand, they’re painted ruby-red by a twisting light. As quickly as Len notices, they’ve faded into the shadows, leaving Len blinking, half a beat behind where he should be when Jody starts up their cover of "Marquee Moon".

Weird, wonderful night. He'll take it. 

He finds the right chord and launches himself back into the sea of sound.

* * *

This whole 'VIP' thing never settles for Eddie, never really feels okay. This extra layer of service, of specialness, is weird. And yet, it's almost a blessing that he's invisible from the wings, the show going on as if he's not there with the exception of a glance every now and then. 

Those glances are spine-chilling, band members looking over and trying to let their eyes focus into the dark to see him. He's a spectre, a hallucination like this. 

It's pretty rad.

Before the lights are even back up, the young woman from earlier is back. 

"Hey, Mister Tarek, we can take you backstage. Bradley and I love your movies so much!"

It's hard not to ask her which ones she means, the ones where he dies prematurely or the ones where he's somehow trapped in toxic friendship or haunted houses or both. Would she be so bold as to bring up the ones set in prison?

He knows better; it's the superhero one. 

He assumes the 'nice guy, glad to be here' posture and tone he uses for the press, and resists the urge to argue about more special treatment when she takes him up a flight of narrow stairs, down a short hallway, and opens a door with a flourish.

"Such an honor you came tonight! Thanks again for thinking of us!" She steps aside so Eddie can enter; when he turns to thank her, she's already gone.

"Yeah, no problem," a hoarse voice says from the other side of the room. "Love coming back here, you know that."

"She may have meant me." He swallows, and tries not to wince, wishing for a second chance at the line. The quick flush breaking out over his face and down his chest makes him too warm, hot enough to shed his jacket and hold it in a hand. 

Len Downing is half-perched on the corner of an old table. He looks up, squints. He's broad shouldered, with a thick beard and a gaze that, just like earlier, goes right through Eddie.

Outside, everything was crowded and dark and loud and then isolating, voyeuristic, a little thrill dispensed because he played a second string character in a comic book movie. It was easy to smile for pictures and be happy, a little removed from everything. Hell, he'd even dressed up for it, acknowledged that he would get the attention that comes with being a 'that guy'. 

It's impossible to play that game here. Here in this little room, a sudden oasis of twinkling lights and solitude, it's like a hatch opened in the world and drew him in. Where the lights on-stage had made Len look wild, roped with muscle and barely-restrained crackling energy, here the awkward combination of Christmas string lights and a fluorescent tube overhead makes him look softer, wearier. 

Human, Eddie's brain supplies. 

"Huh," Len shrugs, scratches his cheek. His nails rasp through his beard as he smiles. "Well, they did say there was a bigwig in the house." 

Eddie's brain reboots and tells him what he already knows: Holy shit, that's Len _fucking_ Downing, even closer and in the fleshier than he was 10 minutes ago; red from exertion, shining with sweat, his heavy mustache and beard glinting with it. 

Fuck, this dude's _hot_. 

This is something different than the album cover images and the monochromatic portraits in NME and on Pitchfork. It's even different from the YouTube bootlegs Eddie used to watch when he was younger. He'd always known that Len was good-looking. He came here knowing that. 

"What'd you say your name was?" Before Eddie can reply, Len adds, "Sorry, man, I know you probably said it but it's been like, fifty years of electric guitars and overblown amps. I'm lucky if I hear my number at the deli these days."

"Hardly fifty years." Eddie leans against the wall, ankles crossed. "More like, what? Twenty? Twenty-five on the outside."

Len laughs, face splitting open so bright and startled-happy that Eddie gives up on acting Hollywood Cool. He has to smile back. This is too surreal. "Now you're just being nice."

"Yeah, maybe." Eddie pushes off from the wall, just about flowing as he closes the space between them. Sometimes, when he's this close to what he wants, everything clicks together and all but takes him over, carries him, delivers him. "Guilty as charged."

He blinks up at Eddie. Clears his throat. "So what's your name, _'Guilty as Charged'_?"

For half a second, Eddie's pinned there, by gaze and voice, and he luxuriates in it. Then he clears his throat and responds, "Ed." 

"Just Ed?" Twisting around to grab a bottle of water from the table, Len asks, "Edward? Edmund? Eddie?"

 _Damn it._ "Eddie" sounds like a fourteen year old. Like the fourteen year old he was when he chose it off a list. He shrugs and nods. "Eddie, yeah. I keep trying to change it, but —"

"Other people have other ideas?" Len suggests.

In the mirror behind Len, Eddie observes himself in this tiny room, pitching his voice low and posture open, flirting easily, picking up what Len's offering and serving it back to him, easy as anything. "You could say that, yeah."

Len drinks down half the bottle, his throat working fast. When he speaks again, he looks like the man onstage, fully in command. 

"Come here straight from the office, bigwig?"

"Sort of, yeah. Why?"

"Dressed for corporate raiding in that shirt. Hostile takeovers and outsourcing logistics and shit."

"What?" Startled, Eddie glances down. "Not a literal office, no."

Len rubs the back of his neck, seeming to take his time looking Eddie over. "Don't get me wrong, looks good on you —"

He's being teased. 

It feels weird to _enjoy_ being teased like that. "Thanks."

If he were being fully honest, Eddie would say _I wore this all for you_ , but Eddie likes to think he can, when necessary, tone it down to socially-appropriate levels. Even now, when he's distracted by how snugly Len fills out his shirt. How broad his thighs are.

"Just," Len laughs, "not usually what I see at my gigs, y’know?" 

"Yeah, well," Eddie says. "What can I say?"

"Like to stand out?"

"I can't help it sometimes."

"Good to know," Len says. "Take a seat, Eddie the bigwig." 

After ninety minutes of singing, his voice is sandpapery-gritty hoarse, but the way it forms around Eddie's name is gentle. 

The fact that he doesn't seem to recognize Eddie is actually an unexpected relief. Eddie could be a regular person, any fan thrilled at getting backstage.

"I mean it," Len says, a little more firmly. "You're allowed to sit. Unless you like posing for a photo shoot over there, I guess." 

Eddie wonders for a second if this is how other people feel when they meet him, but that thought recedes into the mellow bliss of being anonymous. Anonymous and in the presence of someone gorgeous. Anonymous and— recognizing finally why he was so eager to get here, how much attention he paid to the outfits Ms. Condon laid out. 

The excited abstract fizz in the back of his brain becomes clear. He wanted to look good, yes, but he'd asked for Lana to help him with an updo that better framed his face with his new locs, had evened out the bags under his eyes with a little concealer the way Renee had showed him, had made sure to throw on a little extra top-coat even though his nails hadn't gotten dirty through the day. 

He bites his lip, goes to sit down just close enough to Len to speak quietly, not so close that anyone could get scared off. Up close, Len's grizzled and silvery, built like a house under carefully neutral clothes. Eddie tries not to stare, but it's all broad shoulders, thick waist, thighs like a rower's under broken-in jeans and a Pendleton shirt. 

"Everything okay?" Len adds.

Eddie drags his eyes back up to Len's face. He's not embarrassed, at least not as much as he ought to be, about being caught ogling. "More than, yeah."

"Good." Len smiles. "What do you do, then?"

"Actor," Eddie says. 

Len winces as if in sympathy. "Have I seen anything of yours?"

"No," Eddie says. "Don't think you have."

"Huh," Len says, one leg swinging gently. It's unavoidable, watching the inner seam that has faded to pewter, echoes the lines radiating from around Len's eyes. "Should I fix that?"

His phone chimes in his back pocket. He ignores it, but just the fact of it sounding reminds him that, much as he'd like to believe otherwise, they are not alone in the world, nor does he have unlimited time to enjoy this syrup-slow flirtation. 

"Yeah," Eddie says under his breath; his original flush has renewed itself, and spread wider. 

He came here for _Len_ , to meet him, to learn more. But that's like learning Goku loves to fight or Zsa Zsa Gabor had nine husbands. It's information bandied back and forth in tour busses and press tours. It's inside jokes and trivia. It isn't _knowledge_. 

Sitting here, unrecognized but still welcomed, makes him crave something different. Something better than information, something like sense-surround insight, the whole shebang.

"Look, so —" Eddie slides one foot forward until his knee is in the space between Len's. 

"Ooh," Len looks down at the floor. "Great boots." 

"Stole 'em," Eddie says, then laughs when Len looks up, grinning appreciatively. "Borrowed, I guess, from work. I might keep them."

"I'd do it," Len says, serious as anything, "if they looked that good on me."

Lifting his foot a little, Eddie moves it back and forth, turning it, modelling the boot. He's leaning over, eyes on the nape of Len's neck, the loose collar of his t-shirt. When Len starts to straighten up, Eddie touches his shoulder, then rests his hand there.

His phone dings again. Heat's flooding into his gut. He's torn between which one needs his attention. 

Len regards him with slightly narrowed, appraising eyes. The longer he looks at Eddie like this, his mouth a line amidst his beard, the tighter Eddie grasps his shoulder. Len's eyes are a mottled gray-green, not piercing so much as _knowing_.

Eddie wanted to look ready for this moment, and apparently he succeeded. So he should start acting ready, too. 

"Want to tell me what's on your mind?" Len asks quietly.

Eddie's hand moves up Len's shoulder, across damp cotton and soft chamois, to the side of his neck, then higher, into the scratchy mass of his beard. 

"Can't I just show you?" He throws in a cocky smile.

Len looks up at him, eyes steady and grave. "Tell me first."

At that, Eddie's chest tightens and he sways a bit. "I'd really like to kiss you."

When he says it, Eddie feels the same surprising relief that accompanied realizing that Len doesn't know who he is.

"Yeah?" Len asks, quietly as ever, _seriously_.

"Would you be into—" Eddie starts. 

"—About that," Len interrupts him. Up on his feet now, big hands tight on Eddie's waist, he presses Eddie back against, first, the couch, then the wall, his knee digging into the upholstery between Eddie's legs, his mouth coming down hard on Eddie's. The kiss extends his statement, then deepens it. Eddie's arm is folded up between them, hand still on Len's neck, and he holds on with nails and cramping fingers as Len kisses him like a thunderstorm — sudden, overpowering, enough to blank out the grid.

Eddie gets breathless. It's too much and not nearly enough, so fast and sudden but _thorough_. 

Len's chest heaves against his. His beard and mustache scrape up a fever rash around Eddie's mouth that widens to take in his entire face, all of his skin. Len smells like sweat and more sweat and the beer-soaked air of the club, rank and sour, powerful. Eddie wants to shove his face into Len's armpit, bite at his chest, kiss and taste him all the way down. He wants everything Len could give, a gateway to a life he's always wanted. 

His phone chimes again, and he squeezes his eyes shut. Len's fingers graze his jaw, then he pulls back and says, voice both hoarse and high, "You should take that."

 _Don't wanna,_ the horny voice in Eddie's heart mutters. He nods and reaches for it.

Someone raps on the door, several times.

"Be right there —" Len calls over his shoulder. To Eddie, he says, "band's celebrating a birthday, I should probably —"

"Shit," Eddie says at the same time, checking his phone. Five notifications from Ms. Condon. Before Len moves for the door, he grabs him by the hand. "Gimme your phone a sec?"

* * *

Len fumbles for it in the mess on the table and hands it over before crossing the room to open the door. "Yeah, yeah, Kev, I know I'm late —" He stops short when he sees a small, highly-polished young woman in the hallway. She has a phone in one hand, her other fist raised to knock again.

"Eddie Tarek," she says, like she's placing an order.

"Len Downing, actually," he replies. She does not acknowledge his smile, so he sobers up. As far as he can, that is, given that he's just been making out with probably the handsomest man he's met in a long while. "Can I help you?"

"I'm here for Mr. Tarek."

Len's confusion swamps him, makes him lean against the door jamb and sigh. Why can't he go back three minutes with Eddie's tongue down his throat, his ass filling Len's palm like a melon?

"Here I am, here we go, thanks for the meet," Eddie says in a sing-song rush. He slips past Len without looking back, but as he goes, he presses Len's phone into Len's hand, brushes against him bodily as he squeezes past. The dude's hard in his thousand dollar jeans, Len swears it, and _what the fuck_. "Ms. Condon, a thousand apologies, I am all yours."

"I texted you," she says with the authority of a prosecutor driving home the closing argument.

"And I got it late." Eddie's voice has an edge of professional coolness that Len didn't hear before. "Won't happen again." 

He watches them walk quickly to the end of the corridor, watches as Eddie holds open the fire door for her. After she passes, he pauses for a moment, looking back toward Len. Eddie waves a quick goodbye to Len; it's hard to make out. Then he hops outside and the door slams shut.

Len takes his time gathering up his stuff. There isn't much; there never is. Change or two of shirts, couple towels, junk food bags. He's still breathless, which is ridiculous, his mouth buzzing and tingling from the kiss. The kid was lanky, graceful, eyes big and bright in a striking face; his mouth tasted like honey-lemon drops. The way he initiated the kiss, only to melt into Len, loose and sticky and making those little gulping urgent noises was unforgettable. 

Weird shit happens on the road; Len's not so old that he has forgotten that. 

He _is_ old enough — or so he'd thought — that it wouldn't happen to him any longer. It's nice to be wrong. It's also goddamn disconcerting. 

If those are the noises the kid makes over a kiss, Len's mind reels at the idea of the noises he'd have made being pushed against the sofa, or being freed from the collar and cuffs of that shirt, boots kicked off and fly undone. His imagination runs wild with excitement, and he stands there for a moment longer, half-hard in his jeans, still trying to catch his breath. 

"Downing!" Jody bellows from the still-opened door. "Get your ass in gear!"

He recycles what he can, tosses the rest, and only makes his way out to the bar when he's calmed down enough.

"Well, nice of you to make an appearance," Jody gets in; Kevin simply toasts him and kicks out a chair for Len. The party's already well underway. Bradley's here, and his daughter, and three-quarters of the local opening band.

"Anyone ever heard of an Ed Tarek?" Len asks the party in general when he gets a chance. 

Bradley guffaws, while Kevin rolls his eyes and Jody straightens up, lifting his chin and doing a complicated maneuver with both hands. He finishes off with, _"Scarab Knight, away"_ as if Len's supposed to know what that means. He'll have to ask the kid, next call or visit.

An hour or so later, Len is three beers down and buzzing from half a hit on Jody's vape. The party has grown, then shrunk, but now is renewing itself with another local band and a few rich artist poseurs trying to make this area the next Hudson.

His phone buzzes, so he pulls it out, even as Kevin's catching the gentrifiers up on Len's shocking ignorance of Eddie Tarek.

"The Disney kid?" someone says. "From _High School Hootenanny_?"

" _Homeroom Hop_ ," her companion corrects her, then adds, defensively, "my nieces were really into it!"

> _got a sec?_ the text reads. Then, quickly succeeding that: > _shit this better be the right #_

It's from a mystery number, but apparently one he'd texted a 'hi' to earlier tonight. 

"Hi, it's me," Len types back. He needs his glasses to see the screen clearly, but they're back on the bus. 

> _hi me. this is eddie aka bigwig._

For some reason, Len grins, as if Eddie's right here, not a line of pixels on his phone. "Make it back all right?"

> _did, thx. just wanted to say it was great to meet you._

"'meet'," Len writes back. He's searching for the sarcasm emoji — there must be one — when the reply comes in.

> _shd probably say I don't do that at every mtg_

"No?"

> _tonight was a special occasion_

Len starts to laugh, but it catches in his throat, backs up and snags. He coughs, hard, and Bradley leans over to thump him on the back. Before he can think clearly enough to reply, Eddie texts again.

> _there's a surprise for u for when yr alone_

"Can I have it now?"

> _r u alone?_

Len considers lying. But the room is loud, the party's raucous, and, most importantly, he finds he doesn't want to, not to Eddie. Who's Eddie that he should feel like this, especially over a tiny fib? The road just gets weirder.

"Not yet."

> _check yr pics when yr alone_

"Okay," he starts but Eddie's already signing off: > _lmk yr thoughts. feels. reax._

Len rejoins the party, holding out as long as he can against raging curiosity and something else, another feeling that's part anxiety, partly shy. Or timid? He wants to be alone, not just to satisfy his curiosity, but to be with his thoughts. 

He wants quiet and solitude to let the evening's events filter down through his mind, pass from a barrage of overwhelming and exciting sensation into long-term memory.

He lasts for another round, gives his credit card to Kevin to cover the party's tab, and heads out to the bus. It's cold and damp, humid enough that the lights lining the parking lot are haloed in silver. His soles crunch over the gravel as he tries to play it cool, walking to the bus.

He's fumbling with his lockscreen, his thumb sliding unhelpfully off the sensor, as he heads toward the back. Inside is completely dark aside from the glow of his phone. When he does get his photos open, he instinctively twists and bends — to protect the screen from being seen. 

It’s absurd, since he's alone.

Breathing heavily, Len blinks hard, holds the phone far enough away to see clearly.

At the bottom of his camera roll, he sees all the diner food pictures he's been taking as a hobby and way to track the road, all grand slam breakfasts and kitschy coffee mugs. He starts there, tries to hold this moment of anticipation for as long as he can, swiping past. Apparently, he really likes diner food.

And then, the main event. Eddie's pictures were snapped back in the green room, quickly enough that the middle one is a blur, and from a pretty awkward angle. Even so, they're remarkable. If Len were thinking clearly, he'd even call them _captivating_.

Against the backdrop of that ugly orange sofa that's seen better days, Eddie's denim jeans hang very low on his finely-muscled hips, the top button open, the zipper eased halfway down. His skin is exposed above the waistband, and in the rough triangle below, a taut, living expanse that makes Len's mouth go dry and yearning all over again for more of his kiss. A light trail of hair, tiny whorls scattered downward, thickens just above the elastic of his cherry-red briefs. In the third picture, Eddie's hand reaches down, into his open fly, squeezing hard enough to raise the outline of his erection against the fabric. His fingers are gorgeous and long, splayed around the bulge of his shaft, grasping it tightly.

Len lays back against the cold window for a long moment, counting his breaths, trying not to fantasize about seeing that cock up close before swallowing it down. Then he gives up resisting and lets the image take him over.

Len's fingers are thick and clumsy as he tries to text back. All he manages is "fuck". Then, after another few long moments, "you're amazing."

* * *

In the morning, Eddie's call time is what Renee used to call 'Fuck You early.' 

It's kind of rude to text her this early, yes, especially since she's on the West Coast, but he does it anyway.  
> _guess who made a hot  
>(so hot)  
>nu friend  
>last nite  
>go on  
>NEE?  
>answer: he kind of looks like u  
>but even prettier_

He's up and in the gym before he's fully conscious, then, sipping a smoothie, he finds himself delivered to Hair & Make-Up. It's a slog, but damn is he in a good mood. 

"Ladies, gents, the most enby among you," he says by way of greeting. They're some of his favorite people on set. They all look at him good naturedly, between their shots of espresso and getting ready for a long day of color correction and matching and prosthetics. "How are we this fine morning?"

> _ur the wurst, T_ his phone buzzes with Renee's response. > _don't go falling in love just yet_

He misses her. She's always been so good at knowing what was up before she had any right to be. 

Blaine pushes a double espresso into his hand and chides him for a shitty job washing off last night's excesses. Eddie is sent over to Lana with cold compresses on his eyes and tea-tree oil burning away a zit on his neck.

"Had a good time?" Lana asks warmly, tipping his head forward. Alligator clips flick his hair in every which way and she undoes the loose braid that had served to structure the updo she sent him off to have fun in. 

"Yeah," he tells her, smiling down at his lap. He gets it down from 'beaming grin' to 'satisfied smile' by the time she tugs him back up. "Glad I got out for a bit."

She has two combs tucked behind an ear and another one poised over the crown of his skull. To his reflection in the mirror, she says, "glad to hear it, babe."

It's back to the rhythm, after that. 

There’s wardrobe with Allen and then on set, remembering lines and choreography in turns. Today's principal photography on the sword fight that eventually introduces his character as the inadvertent, accidental hero of the story.

It takes him a few tries on that monologue adding a layer of complicated humanity, but he gets there. Too bad it will likely get left behind in the editing booth or complained about in the test screenings. 

It occurs to him nearly midday that he hasn't responded to Len. He has, in fact, pretty much left him on read. 

He kicks in the stunt door, sighs to himself, and tries to focus. 

* * *

The morning brings loads of time for Len to second-guess himself. Maybe he got dosed with too much GHB in Jody's water bottle last night, and hallucinated the entire thing. Too bad he can't delete the text message reply and get it out of his head. 

He checked on Wikipedia last night, suddenly worried by the talk of Disney, but Eddie is not, thank God, a current Mouseketeer or anything like that. He does, however, have great genes for a 25 year old guy. Either that, or maybe child stars and Hollywood types don't live as hard as they used to. 

Len doesn't tell the guys, because what's there to say? 

Before practice, he looks at the pictures again, gets a whole new flush of heat. Maybe there's a lot to tell, he supposes. But nothing anyone else needs to know. He's resigned to sitting on the edge of the stage in the middle of sound check, flustered and revelling in this moment. 

It was a prank, he thinks, or a dare.

As he's looking, the phone buzzes. A tight little thrill races through Len's body. 

> _long-ass day on set…_ the text message reads. > _vv sorry. glad u liked the pix tho_

Len opens up the keyboard. He wants to know why. Is he being pranked? Is this a joke? Why him? But more than those, he'd like to know _how_. 

How does someone that young, with the world at his beck and call, get interested in a never-was punk who can barely hear out of one ear and whose knees crackle with every step? That just gets him back to _why_. 

All those questions are pressing, as well as valid, and deserve answers. Len does not want to ask them, however. Not just now.

"You're incredibly hot," he types instead, chewing the inside of his cheek. "Kind of at a loss for words here."

> _rad!!_ Eddie writes back faster than seems possible. How does he do that, Len wonders? _wanna keep u like that._

* * *

It's the evening after his training session when Eddie opens the door to his trailer expecting Ms. Condon. 

"I keep telling you you don't have to kno—" 

Allen, the reedy beanpole of a kid from wardrobe, takes a step back. 

"Oh sorry! I thought you were —" Allen gasps like he's been caught. He stammers for a moment. "Mr. Tarek, I thought your PA was here. She texted me to bring this over to you." 

It's a stack of folded shirts, baby blue and black and red and brown. Funny, he hadn't actually seen the merch Condon had gotten him off the table last night. 

"Come on in." Eddie thumbs back, and makes room. 

Allen's eyes widen as he hugs the stack to his chest. "Oh, I couldn't. I just wanted to drop them off." 

Eddie sighs and walks down the stairs, reaching out to take the baby blue one off the top. He flaps it out and holds it up, looking at the cut and the shifted seams. In the center of the shirt is a woodcut of small-legged, long-snout wolves, growling at each other over a billowing trash can of fake amazon boxes and banana peels. Len's name is carved into the top in a semi-circle, like it was on the vinyl. 

"Thanks, man," Eddie says. "This looks fantastic."

"Never heard of 'em," Allen offers. "Any good?"

"Oh, yeah," Eddie tells Allen. "Depends on if you like punk, but they're the best."

All this started almost as a joke for the doldrums of doing press junkets. Although he mostly enjoys the process these days, back around _Homeroom Hop_ he grew bored easily and got impatient with the repetition of the same three or four questions the studio had cleared for him to answer. 

No, he didn't play basketball and football like his character; yes, he would sign up for a field trip to the Moon like his character. Sure, his character on the show was a 'rapper' but he liked all kinds of music, not just rap, why do you ask?

It was just fun to turn the question back on them when he could. 

Awkward and flustered reporters unwilling to answer that aside, he started getting the question framed differently. Annoyed, he wanted to find something shocking, something outré that, even if he decided not to share it, could still be his own private joke. 

On a lark, he googled "Gay Punk", during one of his more petulant nights trapped in the gilded cage of another five-star hotel. That night, he came across a wide history of queercore, bands like Pansy Division, Team Dresch, and Fifth Column, which led him to Fairview Mall Sting and the Len Downing Show, and the rest, you could say, was revelation after revelation. He liked the music a lot, though his acquaintance with hardcore to that point was on the soundtracks to Tony Hawk games.

The next morning, a reporter from _US magazine_ even asked to see his ipod, wanted proof of his go-to songs. 

"Interesting," Quietly, scrolling through the song list of 90s grunge tracks and punk music, hip hop instrumentals and neo-soul crooners, the reporter bit his lip and furrowed his brow. "Pret-ty eclectic." 

Eddie shrugged. "I just like lots of different things."

He figured out what _eclectic_ meant a couple years later. That asshole might as well have called Eddie hipster trash at the ripe old age of 15. It was pretty embarrassing, but at least the embarrassment was shared between them.

The music, though, could stay. He still namedrops Len Downing and GB Jones when he's asked about music, though these days his faves also include a Basque hip-hop trio and Kamasi Washington's Blerd jazz. 

If he's feeling 'comfortable and vulnerable' during the longer interviews, he'll even mention his love of Open Mike Eagle like it's a grandiose insight into his mind. It's not; the guy just has bars.

* * *

There's no show tonight, so the band is lingering over dinner just because they can.

Eddie texts him while they're arguing over ordering more cheesy breadsticks. 

> _so hey quick question —_

"Evening," Len types back.

> _grtgs salutations ect. what's yr IG?_

"What's IG?" He slides out from the booth and heads for the front of the diner where the cash register and coat rack are.

> _Insta,_ Eddie texts. > _want to tag u._

Then, while Len stares at the screen, trying to make those words resolve into English, Eddie adds, > _what's your Instagram account name?_

"Don't have one." He peers into the slowly-rotating pie display and wonders how long those pieces have been there. Even so, the key lime looks tasty. Then he remembers something that might be helpful, so he types more. "Used to have a Flickr, though. Can you tag that?"

> _omfg switching to facetime,_ Eddie replies. He must have the very best technology, because before Len can thumb back to the homescreen, there Eddie is in extreme close-up. He looks tired, though then Len has to wonder how he'd know that.

Eddie snorts, like he's caught between guffaw and awe. When he shakes his head, his locs skitter across his forehead. "...goddamn, you're blowing my mind here."

Len frowns at that. "That follows how?"

Eddie's grin is huge; suddenly, Len can see how that face must be radiant on the big screen. His expressions are built larger than other people's. "Just does. Trust me."

"Should I get one? An Instagram?"

"Up to you, man," Eddie tells him. He glances over his shoulder and raises his hand. "Hey, I gotta go. Check Insta in a few?"

Len learns, once he's back at the table and trying to do exactly that in the midst of the guys being dicks to him, that he needs an account to see anything on the site. The post that goes up — Len has to borrow Jody's phone to see it — has Eddie wearing one of their tour t-shirts. He's got one arm flung out, like he's inviting the spectator to join him. The baby-blue shirt reads THE LEN DOWNING EXPERIENCE and it's so tight that it looks as if it's been poured over his body, from his broad, graceful shoulders down to that firm, narrow waist. 

A shot of heat slices right through Len as he thinks about how his hands felt around that body, how warm it was, that corporate drone button down butter-soft under his palms. Eddie was radiating warmth through it as he melted against Len, whimpering against his mouth before it was all taken away. 

Fuck, he's got to get it together. 

Huge thanks to Len Downing and the great folks at Rusted Gears for a sorely needed night off! Feel like a new (+ better) man! Do yrself a favor and catch the band on the rest of their current tour. Check @alifeapartrecs for dates and tix.

Len reads the caption several times, superstitiously reluctant to look at the picture again, like if he does, nothing will be there.

"Dude, gimme back my fucking phone," Jody says finally, plucking it from Len's hand. His laughter brays when he sees the picture. "Scarab Knight likes us! It's our big break!"

Having flipped Jody off without looking up, Len takes up his own phone and signs up for an Instagram account. He hesitates over the account name. It's like naming a song or a painting, giving an identity to something that's _from_ you but not actually you. Then again, Eddie's account is literally **@real_eddie_t** , so maybe Len is overthinking this. Weirdly enough, there are already a few len_downings and LenDownings out there, so he uses a version of the new album's title: **@trashwolves**.

"Great to meet you," he types below Eddie's post. Then he swallows against a rush of heat, grins a little, and adds, "Have to do it again sometime."

They must finish dinner and head back to the hotel, but Len is distracted. Now that he is looking directly at Eddie's picture, he can't do anything else. _That's his name up there_ : for some reason, this is like the first time he saw his name on a marquee, or saw it listed for honors in the MFA he and Eloise did remote.

His name, blazoned across Eddie's chest, stark and vivid. 

He feels something a ways beyond words; it's something warm and viscous, irresistible. Nothing like ownership, but something much more significant than advertising. Presence, he supposes, the way an artist's signature on a painting doesn't claim so much as assert. 

Eddie may be a new man, but now he's dragged Len into the renewal too.

Len has to be honest with himself. He wants to see Eddie lying back wearing nothing but that shirt: Long arms up over his head, chest rising as he breathes heavily, big eyes alight. He wants to trace the seams, nipped and tucked around Eddie's core, pulled tight across his chest and abdomen.

He wants Eddie to _let_ him. Cheer him on, spreading his legs wider making more space for Len, pushing his chest further into Len's hands. He wants Eddie to ask for more, his cock and his mouth and anything else Len could give.

> _r u alone?_ Eddie's text asks as the hotel elevator rises.

"Getting there," he writes back.

No reply until Len is in his room. He grunted something to Kevin before closing the door, excitement making him stumble. Time is moving too fast, then far too slowly. He sits in the narrow chair, then on the edge of the bed before rising, splashing water on his face in the bathroom.

He looks wild-eyed in the mirror, hair standing up, beard going every which way.

Yet when his phone dings, Len jumps in surprise.

> _this one's not 4 the feed_

Eddie's on a conspicuously dirty red floor — must be in his trailer — arm up behind his head, just the bottom half of his face visible in the upper left corner. His back is arched upward, pushing his muscular chest further into the frame. 

His knee's bent, both legs splayed open. He isn't wearing pants. He is, however, wearing a pair of Doc Martens that look like they've seen profoundly better days. 

It doesn't matter, however, because everything's open, on offer, erection straining against snug trunks, tongue flickering against his thumb. The way he's angled his body, even the curves of his ass are on display.

And Len's shirt, twisted around Eddie's chest like a half-hearted censorship bar, ruched around his abdomen as if to say, 'all yours if you want.'

Len does want. He wants to suck at Eddie's chest through the cheap fabric, drag his teeth over Eddie's nipples, make them stand up and strain. He wants to shove the shirt up, twist and maybe tear, expose Eddie beneath it even as he hooks one hand into the rolled fabric and demands they both remember whose name is there.

He wants to fuck Eddie so good, so deep, that Eddie comes like a fountain.

Len's startled by his own vehemence, by how fully-formed the fantasies are as they flood him. Still, he can't help but give in to the rush. 

"Fuck me, that's the stuff," he manages to write back, tapping it out with his left index finger. His fly's open, his right hand already cupping himself. 

> _happy?_

"Yeah."

> _proof? 🥺👉👈_ The emoji looks like it's rolling its eyes. Maybe it's asking wistfully? Len doesn't know how to interpret these things. He has a feeling whatever he learned in semiotics class three decades ago is no longer applicable.

Len rolls on his side. "What kind of proof?"

For once, there's a lag in Eddie's response.

> _show me?_

He smiles, knowing how obnoxious this is going to sound. "What do you want to see?"

> _c'mon dude lemme see the d_

He groans. The light's bad, arousal making him clumsy. The aesthetics of a picture of a cock taken on a cell phone camera have never really made sense to Len, too in his own head about composition and meaning, but he does it anyway. 

_Fuck,_ does he want to get this one right. 

He fumbles the phone at a few different angles until he finally gets a decent shot, dick pulled free of the waistband and a darker reddish-brown against the lighter olive skin of his hand. 

His pubes aren't too gray and there's even a good glint of pre-come smeared around the head.

Heat beats out through him like wind through a sail as he sends the shot to Eddie and starts thrusting harder into his own hand. He thinks about Eddie getting the picture, thinks about that tongue in his laughing mouth, that cock jumping in Len's hand, that ass flexing to take him deep.

* * *

That shot had been hard work, finagling the right amount of all the elements all at once, the kind of thing he'd beat off to himself. 

Locked door to his trailer, Eddie needed to work quickly if he'd actually wanted to get it done, and for a few precious moments, hard and throbbing and also out of his own body, it had seemed a bit too eager. 

What was he doing, he'd thought to himself, trying to find the right way to seduce a man twice his age who could no doubt chew him up and spit him out? Then again, getting chewed up sounded _really_ good just then.

It was easy to handwave away some of those details, because look, it's a bit more relative than that. He's been at this game for ten years, gone through several awkward 'will they, won't they' press-release romances with blondes in glittery eyeshadow he'd had no interest in, no taste for. He'd kiss them on camera, sometimes get paid for it. It never worked out. 

Just once, just this _one time_ he'd like to be around someone who actually gets his motor revving, someone who'd try to understand how to navigate what that looks like and feels like, learning and being learned. 

It's not— It's really not Len's fame, his legacy, that gets Eddie started. Not that or the characters in his songs, gritting his teeth against heteronormativity and rules he didn't make, though they definitely speak to Eddie and always have. It's the fact that he's broad, and hot, and knows what living is outside of whatever hall of mirrors Eddie's 20s have been. 

It's that he's done all of that and still, within minutes of meeting, saw Eddie as himself, too eccentric for his own good. Saw that, teased him about it, and still was into making out with him at the end of the day. He didn't see Eddie's fame, or multiple failed attempts to break out, he didn’t see Disney and he sure as shit didn't ghost. 

Finally, Eddie had scored a good shot, a good enough one to work with. 

Something told him to edit, work as quick as he can, vision coming a little clearer as he went. The floor should be more saturated, he should crop out his nose, he should throw some shadow on the shined black of that shoe.

He'd tried hard not to think about how much his crotch had pulled tight, his underwear leaving almost nothing to the imagination. Then, he'd taken a deep breath, double checked he was sending to the right person on his phone.

"this one's not 4 the feed," he punched in. Sent it off, attached the picture and put his phone down. Len tried to play coy, or maybe he's never had someone give him a shot like that. It's a bit odd, wondering if he's the first person to treat a homocore legend to a boudoir filth-shot. It seems unlikely, right? Len's been off the radar for nearly a decade, but he can't have been in, like, a monastery the whole time.

Worth trying, though, because Eddie's lips still sting a bit from that kiss. His cheeks still burn from Len's beard. He wants to explore himself, explore _Len_ so much more. 

And if, within about five minutes, he's staring at an amazing close up of the plumpest dick he's seen in a while, it's all worth the scramble, as well as the fact that he tried to avoid touching himself. The payoff is big, apparently. _Huge_. 

Len'd had a hurricane tongue and tornado hands he could melt against and apparently his cock was a perfect storm. _Fuck_ , Eddie thinks, as he toes off his shoes and shoves his underwear down off his hips. 

He strokes himself, thinking about Len carving new paths into him.

"Want you to make me take it all," he types, and then immediately deletes. It's true, but it doesn't sound right.

> _you speechless over there?_ pops in.

"wanting u 2 put that in my mouth," he responds, "push me further into the floor when you fuck me." 

> _Want me to ruin you, huh?_

"y" 

> _You've gotta give me more to go on than that, if you're gonna ask for something like that._

He strokes harder, imagining getting told off, imagining going transparent after trying to hold out for so long. God, this guy's a lot and Eddie wants as much of it as he can get. 

> _Be good. Tell me._

He's on fire, he wants this so bad. It hurts to stay still, so aware of where he is, paper thin walls and platforms, anyone and anything trying to barge in and yet imagining that Len's right there, coaxing reality out of him into this space beyond where it's just the two of them feels illicit, shocking, and so, so good.

"You gonna let me come, old man? Now that you've got me fucking my hand on this gross-ass floor?" 

It takes a few moments to get a reply, but man, was all of it worth it. 

> _Yeah, sure. This time._

Thin walls be damned, he's pretty sure he says, "Fuck!" out loud as he comes.


	2. In Transit

Lightning, Len figures, cannot strike twice. Whatever this thing he has with Eddie, it's one of those experiences that doesn't make sense now, and likely won't evolve into making sense in the future. 

Sure, it wasn't a prank, but maybe this is a short-term joke. Clearly, they've both had their fun making out and sending filthy pictures, having phone sex every now and then. But now it's been a few days. 

In a lot of ways, it feels like Eddie has fallen away from view. For a little while there, Eddie's presence was enormous, filling Len's mind, demanding his attention. What's more, Len was relishing that preoccupation. Now Eddie hasn't just faded, but vanished. Len gets it, the joke is over. He doesn't _like_ it, but he gets it. Being cooped up makes him do weird shit, and maybe it's the same with Eddie. 

The Scarab Knight jokes have waned, too. Now, the band's giving him shit about his sudden interest in food pictures and Instagram. He's tuning them out, actively, but being on the road is incredibly _boring_ , the kind of boredom you forget after enough time off-tour. 

If a hot up-and-coming action star and an instagram account was what it took to get Len off the bus and engaged with reality again, then so be it. 

Better than the year he was tapped out on speed. 

He tries to shake all of this off, resigns himself to sticking to the literal itinerary of highways and gigs, performances surrounded by long stretches of bus boredom. 

He's done this before, he can get through it again.

* * *

Now that Len has started posting his food photos to Instagram, he finds he's taking a lot more care with their composition. An audience, however ephemeral, always introduces a certain amount of self-consciousness into the process.

"The process of what?" Jody demands when Len bats his hand away from their platter of fries and onion rings. It's 9 AM and they played Cleveland last night.

"Art," Len replies, turning his phone to landscape. "Expressive communication."

Jody guffaws at that, but that's his problem. Len wasn't bullshitting.

"Just let us eat, Jesus fucking Christ," Kevin tells him. "I'm starving."

"Social media artiste at work," Jody says to Kevin. "Have some respect."

"Downing, I swear to God, I will carve you up and eat you on that very toasted bun if you don't stop that."

"He'd love that," Jody puts in.

"Everyone shut the fuck up for a second." Len straightens up as far as he can and holds the phone up high so he can get the whole table into the shot.

* * *

For a couple days, the production's on crunch to make up for time lost to the crane replacement. Eddie moves back and forth on a well-oiled path between hotel and gym, makeup and set, set and hotel. 

There's a scene he has to film where he just so happens to lose his shirt, and it means his diet has to change yet again for a few days. All supplements, liquids, the kind of shit he hates so his veins can stand out on camera just right, look perfect under the baby-oil shine. 

He hates this job when it asks him to change himself so deeply. 

The lead flubs a line and Eddie improvises one to cover, goes off-block and even more off-book. Something _good_ , too. Looks better in the dailies than anything thus far. 

Good work never goes unpunished. 

Later in the day, he has to spend three hours in a meeting with the line producer, director, and studio guy calling in from the coast. 

Note to self: don't try to help anyone. It still counts as making waves.

Ms. Condon tracks down his agent on vacation in Moldavia or some place and patches him in on the call, too. That was good of her, definitely not what the studio pays her for, but Eddie's in a crappy enough mood that he forgets to thank her on the fly. In his schedule, he writes 'Condon' in messy scrawl before bed, but doesn't finish the thought. Then, 'Vitamin D', because this upstate gloom is getting to him bad. 

Len Downing never got back in touch after their impromptu sext-fest. Eddie tries not to think about it. He doesn't have time to think about it, but that doesn't stop him, unfortunately.

"so that's how it's gonna be huh," he texts Len while in the car after the world's stupidest meeting. "U do that often? make a guy come his brains out + then ghost the poor fucker?"

He doesn't get a response. He didn't really expect one, yet he's hurt all over again. 

He flops into bed, staring up the ceiling, trying to sleep. Yet another gilded cage, yet another day ahead of working out, working, making sure he stands in the right place, flips his hair the right way at the right moment. 

He counts his breaths to sleep.

* * *

Len tries to find the Scarab Knight movie, but that isn't its title. 

He does keep thinking about Eddie. He can't not, despite how ridiculously brief their acquaintance was. 

After sound check, Len has some time to burn. 

Flipping through Netflix, he finds another one of Eddie's movies, a jingoistic shoot'n'cry about Mosul. Something with a few awards, or maybe the poster just has a bunch of laurels on it like those festivals are real and important. Who knows, at this point? 

In it, Eddie couldn't have been more than twenty, his shaved head making his doe eyes look huge, his baby fat not yet carved away. He's heartbreakingly young, his smile dazzling under his little prop helmet. 

Then, twenty minutes in, he takes a bullet, the camera sitting there and watching, patiently, as he bleeds out. Terrifying stuff, the kinda thing that makes Len inhale sharply as Eddie starts crying on screen, legs kicking everywhere. 

It's manipulative, and propagandistic, and trash and it's _moving_ in the kind of way that doesn't feel good at all. Len's never been interested in these kind of movies before, not ones that have budgets and dramatic death scenes. Not ones that kill their best actor _twenty minutes in_. 

Once Eddie's off-screen for good, Len takes it as permission to stop entirely. 

Kevin finally texts him back > _you mean Vigil??_ and he tries to look it up, but it turns out to only be available on one streaming service.

For the best, maybe.

* * *

After midnight, when he's only awake to get some water, Eddie's phone lights up. He checks it, assuming it must be important since only his team and his family have this number.

> _Sorry, just finished a set,_ the text from Len reads. > _What did I do? Can I make it up to you?_

Eddie wants to laugh out loud and, like, punch the air in victory or something. Smiling, biting his lip, he writes back, "you disappeared on me! What gives?"

There's a pause. > _You disappeared, too, though. Technically._

He's bouncing on the edge of the hotel bed. Eddie's glad in so many ways that he's alone right now, because he must look like the worst kind of dork. "Let's get back to how you can make it up to me."

> _Hmm, try again._

He stops bouncing. He can _hear_ Len's voice saying that, and he has to swallow a rush of spit and adjust his twitching cock. "Or how I could make it up to you…?"

> _Better._

"All ears, man."

> _Stay in touch,_ Len's text says. > _That's #1._

"Do blowies count as staying in touch?"

> _...fuck, hotshot. You're good._

Eddie bobs his head, as if Len can see him acknowledging that. "You have no idea."

He doesn't actually have the time to fool around tonight, and eventually tells Len that, but they make an appointment (Eddie wants to call it a date but forebears) to talk the next afternoon.

He sleeps like a baby. After he jerks off in the bathroom, that is.

* * *

It turns out Eddie has a lot of downtime, almost as much as Len does, and it sounds like he's been dying for a chance to talk. It's a few days later. They're talking about things that aren't how hot they are, for the first time. Eddie tells him about the movie, quickly. His co-star is kind of a ditz and a dick, but superfamous and English ( _his name's Trevor fucking Nottingham, and it's not even made up! That's what he was born as!_ ), the director is a Danish weirdo, it's late and cold, the movie is dumb.

"But, can you explain it to me again?" 

The bus is somewhere between Baltimore and Richmond, and it's always been an antsy drive, simultaneously too long and too short, why do they bother, just pick DC. 

"So it's like a zombie apocalypse but like, it was already a shit situation beforehand." 

Len squints. "Brave New World shit situation? Or, like, Left Behind?" 

"Like Hunger Games, I guess," Eddie sounds like he's bored with all of it. "It's based off this show from Latin America, I think. Some kind of class allegory, I guess."

"They're all class allegories, last time I checked," Len says, thoughtlessly. 

"Yeah," Eddie agrees. "Some of them just have more backflips than others." 

It takes everything he has not to laugh at how sage Eddie sounds while shitting on this film. 

"But, wait, why didn't they get the people that made that to make the movie you're on?" 

"That shit never works," Eddie mutters. "But I kinda wish they had. The director keeps telling me I'm a robot and also a real boy and I'm just…" 

"Does it matter if you're a robot?" Len asks. 

"I'd like to think so," Eddie almost snaps, then sighs. "Sorry. The zombies might also be robots at this rate? The guy's English isn't the best." 

"Is it at least following the TV show? Like, can I go watch that to figure out what the fuck you're talking about?"

"You know, I'm honestly not all that sure," Eddie says. "I used to get blown up in these movies all the damn time so I just stopped paying attention to the source material." 

"That's a healthy way to cope," Len offers. 

"The lead's kinda an idiot, too," Eddie says, softly. 

"I thought you were the lead," Len offers. "Aren't you the lead?" 

"Nah," Eddie says lightly. "Better to wield the katana then carry the story." 

Len has a million questions. He holds off, a little, and tries to make it easier on himself, on Eddie. He's never understood theatre kids, honestly. Eddie's not nearly as hyper and attention-needy as the theatre kids Len remembers, but maybe that's just because he's successful.

Len isn't sure he understands how to get to know someone from this far away, either. Maybe Eddie can help, but this mediated dance you do when you first meet someone doesn't feel like it could work without the shifting glances and hands moving as you each try to solve each other's puzzles. As you try to understand expectations, tune and calibrate. 

Hell, Len needs to try to understand what he wants for himself, at this rate. It's been a _while_. 

"It's cold," Eddie mutters. "I wish they would have put some more fleece in this jacket." 

It's weird, hearing scraps of Eddie's life from afar, from the guys and from Instagram and from Eddie himself. Len knows Eddie's real— a hallucination in his horniest fantasies, sure. There's someone in there, though, underneath the fantasy. Someone interesting as hell.

"What are you up to?" Eddie asks after a moment.

"Not sleeping, renegotiating a couple bookings, reading," Len tells him.

"Multitasking."

"Nah, just can't focus."

"I won't tell," Eddie says.

Len smiles, then keeps smiling. He's determined to master this mode of getting to know someone. "Thanks."

* * *

"I want to ask you a question," Ms. Condon says, "because it's not really all that clear." 

They're sitting in the backseat of the car, shielded from the rain. Outside, it's coming down hard, and Eddie watches as the people on set do their best to tolerate Trevor's behavior. 

The driver is on a coffee break; the car's all theirs. 

"Sure," he says. 

"I tried Len Downing's music a few days ago," she says. 

That's a surprise, he thinks. 

"Did you like it?" Eddie asks. He turns to her, looks over at her messy top-knot and the line of shearling around her neck, peeking out from her jacket. 

She hesitates for a moment. "It wasn't my thing. What do you see in it?" 

It's hard to answer that question honestly. After all, Condon doesn't work for him. Still, she had the audacity to ask, and that's a little interesting. 

He could lie, just say it was something to do on a night off, but he knows she saw him walking out of that venue, hard in his jeans and glowing. Condon's too professional, industry seasoned, been around actors too long to fall for someone like him trying to play it cool. 

"Someone screaming for the freedom to be themselves," he says, choosing his words as carefully as he can. "And angry that he has to liberate others too." 

She makes a noise at that. "So the show was good?" 

"The best," he says, and means it. "Thank you for helping me get in." 

She looks up, her pale skin illuminated sickly in the dark by her phone and the floodlight coming in from outside. 

"I'm your assistant," she says. "It's my job." 

"Doesn't mean I can't thank you," he says. 

They both fall quiet for a moment. 

"What was it like meeting him?" she asks, and it sounds like she's trying hard not to sound small about asking. "Did you get star-struck?" 

Eddie smiles, and breaks out into a laugh. "Yes, I did." 

"I saw he commented on your post," she says, and her voice bends into a little note of bemused excitement on his behalf. "I'll try to find a time in your schedule where we can get you out to see him again." 

Eddie's blood runs cold at what that sounds like. Her voice sounds like she knows, like it's a promise. He can't really afford for her to know, not really. 

He turns, fires a few texts from his phone.

> _R, cn u get mom to look in2 Condon's salary @ the house?  
>Also, Lana Robinson's rate?  
>Getting an idea._

Turning back, he clears his throat and finds, as one acting coach used to put it, his core of calm. "Can I ask you a question as well, Ms. Condon?" 

"Of course, Eddie," she says. "You really can call me Jamie." 

He could. 

"What's your favorite kind of music? What do you listen to a lot?" 

"Most of the stuff on the radio's pretty fine for me," she says promptly. It sounds a bit like a lie of professional circumstance, never getting too close to your client. Eddie can understand that, he supposes. "I listen to 'this is my fight song' almost daily."

"I don't think I've heard that one," Eddie says. "Is it an actual fight song?" 

"No," Ms. Condon says easily, then pauses. "Why would it be?"

> _o so u like her now??_ Renee texts back.

* * *

Eddie seems to enjoy sending him pics and sexts at the oddest times, an unpredictable rhythm that, try as he might, Len can't entirely ascribe to the kid's strange working hours.

"Jerking me around, hotshot?" Len asks the next time they're on FaceTime. 

"Huh?"

"Get the feeling you like playing games."

"Nah," Eddie says, brows curving as they draw together in a frown that's mostly bafflement, but slightly offended, too. "That's not me."

Len grins at him and cocks his head. "No?"

"No," Eddie says firmly.

"Because from where I'm sitting, right, I'm getting these hot pictures and amazing texts just out of the blue. No rhyme or reason, they just show up."

Eddie shrugs and shakes back the locs from his eyes. "I work crazy hours, man."

"Yeah," Len says, still acting as if he's slightly confused and trying to understand, "you do, that's true."

"You want me to, what? Stick to a schedule? Should we make this routine? Plug into our calendars and synch 'em up? Nice and orderly, part of a whole to-do list?"

It's Len's turn to act baffled, even dumbstruck. "Make what routine?"

Eddie opens his mouth, then closes it. He was sliding along on a good rant, working up a nice head of steam, and now Len's throwing a stick in his wheel and jerking him onto a whole new (far more serious) topic. That must be so frustrating, and Len gets to enjoy the sight of such frustration. It's not half so good as being there, but it's pretty good.

"This," Eddie says curtly. "Us."

"There's an us?" Len scratches his beard, then rests his cheek in his hand and frowns a little. 

"Shut up," Eddie says. "Now you're just fucking with me."

"Maybe, I dunno." Eddie starts to say something, but Len says over him, "Got another question for you, though, while I have you."

"What?" Eddie looks suspicious, but what Len is coming to realize is his innate good-humor wins out, and he smiles back, looking hopeful.

"You want some video next time? Or are you a traditionalist, preferring the classical approach?" He puts on the worst French accent he can muster. "Just the stills for Monsieur's dick pics?" 

Last night, Len looked up how to record video clips on his phone. 

"Video?"

"Technicolor, larger than life. Think you can handle that?"

Eddie takes his sweet jackass time licking his lips. "Think I'd like to try, yeah."

* * *

By the time the bus hits Virginia, Len has sixteen Instagram posts (he backfilled some with his favorite meals of the past) and, thanks to Eddie's post, almost 4,000 followers with names like **x_krystaltearz_x** and **mammmmacita4tarek** and **scarabstan2k5**. He keeps misreading the last as scarabstank, then feeling bad for doing so.

" _You_ don't have the followers," Eddie says at one point, "your account does. Important difference."

Len hears him, but doesn't bother parsing the distinction.

The band is not impressed by his success, to put it mildly, particularly as his photography continues to get in the way of their eating.

"Sorry, guys, I've got to give the people what they want," he tells them when they start complaining at a fish shack on the Roanoke.

"Fuck it, I'm starting." Jody stuffs an entire river herring into his mouth. Len takes a picture of that, too, tail coming out of Jody's maw, filters it like a horror movie, and posts it. It gets the most likes yet.

* * *

They've been talking while the sun is up. It's a little disorienting, but also nice to be fully awake for once. As Eddie nears the gym, he tells Len, "Need to wrap this up, I'm about to work out."

"Again?"

He checks the weight room, but there's no sign yet of Shannon. "What do you mean, again?"

"You just did," Len says. "Didn't you?"

"Are you getting forgetful already? Little early, isn't it?"

Len grunts at that and Eddie smirks; they're just on a voice call, but still, it feels good to get a good hit in. 

"Yesterday," Eddie adds. "I worked out yesterday. I work out today. I will work out tomorrow."

"Call me back after, then," Len tells him. 

Eddie's changing now, trying not to let his shirt catch on his AirPods. He mumbles something, Len tells him to speak up, so, shirtless, Eddie says, "You'll be playing by then."

"What?" It sounds like Len's pushing back a chair, its legs screeching. "How long can a workout take?"

"Couple hours."

Len's laugh comes as loud as a seal's bark. " _Every day?_ "

"Every day." Eddie bends one knee and holds his ankle, stretching out his thigh. Then he does the other one.

"Fuck. I'm tired just hearing that."

"Please. You're swole."

"'Swole'," Len says back to him.

"That kind of body doesn't just happen," Eddie says.

"I work out," Len says. "Just not for half a day every day, _fuck_."

Shannon waves at him as she heads to the washroom. Eddie waves back and says, "Yeah, so what's your process?"

"I'm going to pretend I didn't hear that."

"No, man, I'm interested —"

"Sure, but I'm not," Len notes. Eddie snickers. "I used to run. Now it's more just free weights and the bike."

"Like a Peloton?"

"What's that?"

"Stationary bike. Or are you out on the road, darting through traffic, making your own rules, pissing off both drivers and pedestrians like a huge douche?"

"Oh, Christ. No, stationary. Exercycle. In my garage."

What is Len's house like, anyway? Eddie's suddenly dying to know; no time to ask now, no assurance Len would even answer, but he files the question away.

"Right, so you get it. Working out."

"I do not," Len says and pauses, drawing a dramatic breath, "in any way whatsoever 'get it', hotshot. Not what you're doing and calling working out."

Eddie jumps up and down a few times, testing his vertical as he thinks through how to explain this. He's not sure quite why he feels the need to get Len to understand, but he does.

"Okay, so. You tune your guitar, right? Check your amps and distortion box. Run whole soundchecks before every show."

"Sure, yeah." Len sounds doubtful, as if Eddie's in the process of trying to sell him Amway or herbalite or essential oils. "Of course I do."

"Same idea. Body's an instrument, gotta keep it in condition to do the work."

Len says something in response, possibly dirty about _doing the work_ , though that might just be Eddie's wishful thinking. Shannon's coming into the gym now, towel over her shoulder. 

"I gotta go," Eddie says quickly. "Talk later bye. Hey, Shan."

She has her hands on her hips as she looks him up and down, stern but affectionate like he's a puppy who's gnawing on her favorite shoe. 

It could be worse. She could be pissed. 

"What did we say about starting on time?" Shannon asks. 

Eddie's already moving toward the mats behind the neat row of kettle bells. "Wait like a gentleman for the lady and be sure to inquire about her day? How was your day, anyway?"

Shannon's gotten to where she is through raw discipline. She doesn't tell the story often, you only need to hear it once, really, but she's lived a lot of life before being here. She's tried— her hardest- to give him that same sense that he could do anything, sculpt anything he wants out of himself. 

It's that discipline she's tried to teach that mandates his workouts begin at the top of the hour, whether she's there or not. Whether, in fact, there's any equipment or not. He suspects they'll happen forever, whether he's drawing breath or not.

The way she looms over him like this is pretty intimidating. He _wishes_ he could loom like that. Five-two and built like a fire hydrant, she could totally take him in a fight and barely break a sweat.

Shannon snaps the towel hard against his ass. "Nice try. Get to work, you owe me ten minutes extra."

"Fair," he says, lowering himself to the mat. "But how was your day for real?"

"Had a good lunch with Jamie, she said you drank beer a few days ago at that concert."

"I knew Condon was a traitor," he mutters. Renee would never have ratted him out, he'd like to think. He's wrong, the entire team is there for him, so of course they're going to tell each other when they have to make accommodations. Still, he likes the version he's making up. "Hate you two ganging up on me like this."

"Hope it was worth it." 

Eddie pushes back into a handstand and Shannon steadies him at the knees, gives him a chance to find his balance. "It was, actually, thanks. Definitely worth it."

* * *

"I, um, need to double-check something," Eddie says, the next time they speak. It's the first time Len has seen the guy nervous, fidgety. "Got a minute?" 

They've already been on the phone for ten. Len shrugs. "Sure." 

Eddie's peering at the camera, eyes bigger than seems possible. He looks sober, or maybe the word for it is somber, or at least the exact fucking opposite of the guy Len's been learning more about through these calls and texts and those pictures he can't stop looking at once he gets into his bunk. 

"I know you're out," he says. "And into pride, and wearing your identity. You're okay with being out, outing?" 

He asks it like he's trying to figure out if it's a word. 

"Outing?" Len repeats. There's a concept he hasn't thought about in years. "Ed, do you need to take a break? Get this clear in your head, maybe write it down, then call me back?"

For a minute, Eddie looks like he may take him up on that easy-out. And then he somehow musters up the courage for the opposite. 

"I got it," he says, firmly. "I need to ask for us to keep this quiet." 

"Keep what quiet?" Len asks, like an asshole, because he can't help it. 

"You're holding three pictures of my dick in your phone, come on."

"Sorry."

Eddie's mouth twitches. He stumbles over his words, like he's ashamed he has to ask. "I'd just prefer it — I need to keep this, and yes this is a this— 'us', quiet." 

"Us," Len repeats. This is all so fucked and backwards. How is he supposed to make sense of this? To get to know a person, you need to be _with_ them. Go on some dates, fuck around, hang out. 

Whatever he and Eddie are doing is so different from normal, from what he's used to, that Len is far more lost than he suspected. How can this be anything other than light and casual if they're always so far away from each other? If they can't chill, share, go on dates, fuck? If they're always in the palm of each other's hand, unflattering angles and pixelated mediation? Right there, but thousands of miles away? What's the point of learning digital edges of someone, when you can't really console them the way humans need? Len doesn't get it. 

"Look..." Eddie lifts a shoulder, rubbing the back of his neck. In a single rush of words, he adds, "I understand if that's not something you're comfortable with on account of how it's a lie or whatever. And I get that it's Hollywoody and cowardly but also it's kind of the way it needs to be right now. For me."

"You have some interesting assumptions about what I'm comfortable with," Len says after a moment. 

He isn't sure that he follows, not entirely. What he does understand is this: Eddie's telling him what he, Len, thinks. That's something that's never sat well with him.

"I read your interviews! I know about your 'outing' days!" Frowning like that, Eddie looks serious. Impatient, a dash exasperated.

At least they're not talking about "us" any longer.

But, wait, that would mean — "you're holding me to shit I said when I was younger than you?"

"You thought those things, at one point!" Eddie says. 

"What if I held you to claims you made back in 2001?"

"Back then I was basically wearing a diaper," Eddie points out. "The highlight of my day was Cheerios."

"Same difference," Len says, even though it isn't. Maybe it is. He scrubs at his hair and inhales slowly. Then, in a great burst as the thought occurs to him, he adds, "How many of my old interviews do you have? Do I want to know?"

"You probably don't, no," Eddie tells him.

"How'd you even find them?" Most of them appeared in zines or, at best, alternative papers that haven't been published since Y2K. Len can't blame him for being concerned, honestly. He remembers some of that stuff, bits and dregs of the character he was playing in the scene. He never lied, but he definitely exaggerated, presented himself as starkly black-and-white, right-and-wrong, as the Xerox stills on the cassette sleeves and posters. 

There is, to be sure, some stuff that didn't age well. Likely droves of stuff that would make a young-up-and-comer feel nervous. 

He doesn't want Eddie to learn anything from stupid interviews and obnoxious braggadocio that's older than he is. He isn't that guy any longer; he doesn't want to be that guy. But it's more than that. Getting to know someone like that is artificial, way more so than even this digital affair.

"PA's are magical creatures, Len. They can get anything." 

Cocky little shit. 

"Huh," Len replies, thinking hard. "They sound dangerous."

"You're mad," Eddie says with finality. As if that's such a strange prospect, as if he'd never dreamed it were possible. "Is it the closet thing?" 

"What closet thing?" Len asks, distracted. 

"It _is_ the closet thing." Eddie sighs and lies back. Now Len can't see his face, just a corner of a bedspread and a bright white wall. "Dude, it's not — it's not like it's my choice. But I can't afford to — you know."

"You're not actually saying anything right now, you know that, right?"

"I'm fucking trying!" 

The hurt in Eddie's voice is sharp enough to cut through a good portion of Len's thoughts. 

"No, I know you are," Len says and breathes out to buy some time. He can't understand his own thoughts, let alone whatever it is Eddie's trying to say. "So the main thing is that, what? You want to keep me as your secret side piece?"

He waits, smiling, but Eddie doesn't laugh.

"That was a joke, hotshot."

"I should go," Eddie mutters.

"Ed, c'mon," Len tries, but nearly says, _you really think this can work?_

That's the last thing he actually wants to say. There's simply an asshole at the center of him and that guy always needs to have his say. 

"Yeah, I'm gonna go," Eddie says when they've been quiet for too long.

"Don't." Len sits up straighter. "Can I see you? Just for a sec."

Eddie looks sad and distant, his gaze lowered when he comes back into view.

Len doesn't know what the fuck to say or do.

"Better?" Eddie asks dully.

"Actually, yeah," Len replies. He doesn't have to think about that. It's just the truth. "Hey."

"Sup," Eddie says, just as flatly.

It occurs to Len that he _could_ , if he wanted to, get irritated by Eddie's sullenness. That sort of sulk never sat well with him, but maybe — he's thinking now — maybe that's because he'd usually been the cause of such a mood. Maybe the person he's made sulk isn't doing it to manipulate him. _Maybe_ he hurt their feelings.

He probably should have figured this out a long time ago. 

"You want to keep this thing discreet," Len says. "That's cool. Understandable, more than fine. You're someplace in your career where putting yourself out there with someone is a risk. Especially with...whatever the fuck this is. I get it."

Eddie lifts one graceful eyebrow. "Yeah?"

"I don't mind, but I need to ask something in return," Len adds.

Eddie's gaze darts away and he bites his lip and his shoulders rise a little. "What is it?"

"We need to agree not to read about each other."

"What, like press and shit?"

"Like press and shit, yes," Len nods. "Lots about that scene you don't know. Lots I said would be even worse if you read it out of context. So let's not." 

"Okay, but Condon's gonna be really sad," Eddie says. His voice is lifting, his face relaxing, and, damn it, Len's smiling back already. "She worked so hard!"

"Thank her for assembling the archive of my tomfoolery," Len says, "she did great, truly impressive. Just don't _read_ any more of it. For me?"

"Yeah." Eddie's rubbing his mouth, barely hiding his smirk. "But can I look at the dirty drawings you did at least?"

"Fuck me," Len replies. Last he'd heard, the three-issue run of _INCORRIGIBLE: A zine for strokin'_ was going for $500 US and available at two print ephemera galleries, one in Toronto, one in Chicago. Not that he'd see any of the money. "Yeah, sure. Knock yourself out."

"Sweet! I will." Eddie adjusts the phone as he shifts around. "They're pretty hot."

"You already looked, huh?"

"Uh," Eddie's brow furrows, like he's having a hard time imagining that he was supposed to hold off, "of course I did. Have you met me?"

"But you liked them?"

"Yeah, totally," Eddie says. "For, like, pre-Internet cave porn, they get the job done _good_."

Len laughs, warmth spreading through him: it's relief, as well as amusement, but there's a deeper, hotter current coming out of the image of Eddie jerking off to his art. He's a simple man, after all. A beautiful guy getting off to his weird drawings feels like Christmas morning.

"Tell her to hold on to it all if she wants," Len says. "But let me tell you about what it was like, okay?" 

And if this is how they have to make it work, maybe it's worth it? Len's not sure how that mechanic works in real time, but knows he's only ever felt this way about someone in person, wanting them to see him and not just the guy who gets on stage. 

If Eddie wants to learn, Len's ready to try and teach.

* * *

Eddie is stuck in a run of night-shoots. That's fine by Len; he doesn't sleep through the night much any longer.

"Do you like it, though?" Len asks. Eddie has just finished telling him how cold it is in the old industrial park, that there's been sleet on and off, and Trevor Nottingham's hair is getting limper by the minute. To hear him tell it, making a movie kills the soul through both boredom and irritation.

Scowling, Eddie tugs his sweatshirt hood up and wriggles into the garment's warmth. "Like what?"

"Acting."

"Acting? Fucking love it. It's my heart's truth." Eddie's smiling suddenly as if he'd just been delivered a pizza and a million dollars in gold. "And this is okay, too, usually. Just not tonight."

"What's the difference?"

"Huh?" He's glancing off-camera, listening to someone else, but then he looks back and Len can nearly physically feel the moment Eddie's focus snaps back on him.

"Between acting and 'this'." 

"Acting is reacting," Eddie says quickly. "It's honest and in the moment. It asks me to transform into someone else."

"Isn't that what you're doing with the katana?" 

"Nah, this is choreography. Traffic direction. Wear nice clothes, stand here and there, say quips and catchphrases. It's all planned and I'm part of the execution."

"Right, so —" Len starts to say.

"And I like it usually? It's like being inside a giant machine and watching a thousand pieces come together. And the money is obscene."

"Uh-huh."

"But it's not acting," Eddie finishes. "It's its own thing and I respect that. Usually."

"Just not tonight," Len says, smiling a little.

"Just not tonight when it's fucking cold and late and I'm tired and horny, yeah," Eddie says.

"Wish I could help," Len says and leans a little closer. Eddie closes his eyes and moans briefly. "Yeah. Just like that."

Eyes opening, Eddie shakes his head. "Sorry, have to focus."

"Of course. Just a useful reminder."

"Sure, man. Sure." The smirk he gives Len is just about as good as any picture or video they've traded: hooded eyes, glimmer of tongue, expression louche-yet-hungry.

* * *

The bus left last night's venue and pushed on straight through to Charlotte. Len slept a little at first, but didn't realize it — his mind still going, buzzing, from performing — until his body twitched from toe to chin and he kicked himself awake.

Now, in the little lounge at the back of the bus, he's lying across one of the couches, a leg dangling off the side, a pillow pressing angry lines into his cheek. The blackout curtain is raised a little, revealing a wedge of highway and pre-dawn sky. 

That sky, this road, the whole banal sight is painfully familiar. He's seen it drunk, he's seen it out of his mind on speed; he's seen it behind the figure of whoever he was blowing at the time, he's seen it while fucking someone else. He's seen it alone, just like this, so many times. The bus is just going to keep pushing forward, carrying him along, always onward.

The scrubby grass Len can see from up this high sometimes produces an occasional scrawny tree, burlap visible at its manicured base. The sky ahead is no-color, old TV static shot through with headlights from the opposite lane.

A crescent of his face is reflected in the window, hovering over the rest. Sometimes he still gets surprised by the heaviness of the lines around his mouth, how they furrow under his beard. He gets surprised by how his eyelids droop, complimented by the permanent smudge under his eyes. It's like he woke up exhausted one morning twenty years ago and just _stayed_ that way, tired and unrecognizable.

When his phone chimes, Len considers ignoring it. 

He looks down at the little panel of light, and the screen melts away from its lock screen to show his messages. 

He's tired, it's hard to believe anyone who knows where he is would be calling with anything important. Most importantly, he's too sullen and depressed to care all that much. 

On the other hand—and he's not proud of just how fluttery and excitable this hand is—it could be Eddie.

The notification reads _Bigwig Ed_. He used to have Eddie entered as _Hotshot_ , but changed it a couple days ago.

> _sup_

"Why are you awake?"

> _y are u_  
> _huh?_  
> _hmmm?_  
> _riddle me THAT big guy_

"Better question, how are you so awake?"

> _haven't slept just got in v v wired_

"Punctuation?"

> _where were going we dont need punctuation ombray_  
> _ombre_  
> _homber???_

Len sucks on the inside of his cheek, considering that, as a smile twitches over his face. His mood isn't cured, nothing like that. He's still on that knife's edge where a strong push either way, toward joy or despair, could tip back and land him right back in the other field. "Do you have time to talk?"

> _whatre we doing now_

"Voice talk," he types, "no, FaceTime?" 

He looks away from the screen, back out the window. The horizon has lightened somewhat to a dirty peachy gray. There's an old safety-orange plastic fence in the ditch beyond the shoulder, running parallel to the highway. It's more holes than fence now, lacy against the wind.

As his phone rings, Len squirms to get more comfortable. "Hi."

"What's up?" Eddie asks right away. He doesn't sound quite so manic as his texts had suggested. As he comes into view, he looks like he's half-ready for bed, half-ready to jump back on set. "You okay?

"Yeah, of course." Len folds an arm behind his head and scratches his beard. "Why?"

Eddie exhales noisily. "It's like five in the morning and you texted back right away and also you look really sleepy."

"All true, yeah." He glances out the window. "How was your night?"

Grinning, Eddie shakes his head and wags his finger. "Nice dodge, gracefully done, I'll let you have it. My night was _fantastic_." 

Eddie's smile is infectious, sunshine on Len's late-night regret parade. 

"What was fantastic about it?" 

"We finally got to the wire work tonight," Eddie says. 

"You let them tie you up on camera, or somethin?" Len asks, and watches Eddie try to resist the urge to make that even dirtier.

"Not like you're thinking," Eddie says, biting the corner of his lip like he's trying not to say something else. "It lets me do stuff like walk onto walls in the middle of fight scenes, and I did a fucking backflip in three takes. Only dropped my nerf sword once. Well, three times, but two were before we were rolling." 

"Uh-huh," Len says and he's smiling now for real. His face feels warm, actually. Everything Eddie's told him about this movie means he has no real interest in ever seeing it, but it sounds cool and it's got him fired up, so it can't be all that bad. "Congratulations."

Eddie mock-bows a few times. "Thank you, thank you, you're too kind."

"Aren't there stunt guys for that, though?"

"Sure, I have a stunt guy." Lifting one shoulder, Eddie waves his hand dismissively. "He's a cool dude and all, super chill."

"I mean, aren't the stunt guys there for backflips and wire shit?" 

"For some? Sure. Lots of people hate them," Eddie folds his arms and leans back. "For me, nah..."

"You are way too cocky, kid," Len laughs. "This what you look like when you're pleased with yourself?"

Eddie guffaws. "Something like that, yeah. But I'm super-flexible and pretty strong, so..." He drops his voice to something that Len can only think of as a damn _purr_. "Why wouldn't I show that off?"

"Why wouldn't you," Len echoes softly.

"I'll have to show you sometime," Eddie leans back in toward the screen and cocks his head. "I can bend every which way."

"Please do," Len says. "Raincheck?"

"Raincheck."

They're quiet for a bit, Len relaxing, Eddie bouncing around on his hotel bed trying to get comfortable, until Len realizes that in the old days, there was no way you could do this. Not just video-call, or even use a phone on the bus, but stay quiet like this.

Chuckling a little, he says, as the thought finishes, "...huh."

"What's that?" Eddie's under the covers now, eye-mask sitting at his neck as he fidgets with the drawstring tie of the tube of stretchy fabric pulled protectively around his hair. "Or are you snoring?"

"No, just thinking about the old days," Len says. "How expensive long-distance calls were."

"Yeah, my grandma always complained about that."

"Fuck you," Len says lightly. He's not _that_ old. Probably. He's not interested in doing the math.

"No, man, I'm sympathizing! She couldn't call home but once a month, sometimes only twice a year."

"Yeah, well." Len pulls himself up so he's sitting. "This is better."

Eddie half-smirks. "'Cause it's cheaper?"

"Sure, but I was thinking quieter."

"Hmm, yeah." As Eddie lets his eyes close, his face relaxes. From this angle, his cheeks are rounder than they often look, and his plush lips curve up at the corners. "Tell me about the old days when things were expensive and noisy."

"What do you want to hear?"

Eddie murmurs something that Len doesn't catch. He turns on his side, where it's darker, and continues, "— gay punk?"

"Why was I a gay punk?"

"No, that part's obvious," Eddie replies, smile tilting as he waits for Len to laugh. "I _said_ , why gay punk? Like the whole homocore thing? The scene?"

"There was no scene," Len tells him. "Not at first."

As Eddie lies there, smiling sweetly, his lashes brushing his cheek, Len tells him more about the very earliest old days. He was barely in art school then. The main thing was that he _wasn't_ in Orillia any longer. He was free, he was making terrible art and listening to worse music, and it made him hungrier for more. 

There wasn't a scene anywhere, not in Portland or Chicago, certainly not in Toronto, but Len, with all the others, wanted one. They read each other's zines and papers, traded tapes, and they knew very well what a regular punk scene was like. 

They started describing the scene they wanted to inhabit, complete with local celebrities, feuding go-go boys, illegal concerts in imaginary squats, and graffiti wars. Everything they made — zines and music and art projects — was constitutive. They weren't communicating what was around them but what they wanted to see around them.

Eddie yawns, then apologizes. "Define constitutive."

Len regrets starting this story before they were face to face again, hates himself for watching Eddie fall asleep and feeling like he wishes he could reach through the phone. For a moment, it burns that he's not there with Eddie, a guy that he barely even knows, holding him as he faded off to sleep. 

"Basically," Len says as he tries to push the feeling aside. "We bullshitted the world we wanted into being. And for a while, it worked."

Eddie smiles at that, wider and wider. After a bit, he says, softly, "That's _beautiful_."

Len's mouth tastes sour. If he's going to be awake, he needs coffee. "Sure. It was. Until it wasn't."

"So what happened?"

He doesn't have the wherewithal to describe how things withered and died. Nothing happened dramatically, but energy withdrew, people drifted away, crowds changed. A lot of small changes over a long time became much more dramatic in effect than a single massive change ever would have been.

Instead, he sighs, "Can't pay rent with bullshit. Can't eat bullshit." Len takes a breath and lets it out fast. "Well, you _can_ , but it'll kill you. Better not to try."

Eddie props his head in his hand, gaze sharp on the screen. "Jesus, Len."

"Yeah."

He lies back down. "So what's your excuse?"

Len opens his eyes. He checks the road outside, where the sky is brighter and the traffic getting heavier, and tiredness seeps through his bones. "My excuse? Excuse for what?"

Eddie's smile goes syrupy-slow. "You're still doing it, being the scene. What's your excuse?"

That's a kick in the nuts, or it could be, if Len let it be. But Eddie looks sleepy-sweet, kissable in a way that Len can't quite define beyond _candy_ , and it's both really late and way too early. 

So Len simply says, "Oh. I'm addicted to my own bullshit. Ask anyone."

Eddie yawns again, and fumbles with his eye mask. In the midst of another enormous yawn, he says something that might be _love your bullshit_ , but it's garbled.

"You sleep," Len tells him. "Good dreams."

"The best," Eddie replies, which doesn't make much sense, but seems to amuse him, because he's still smiling when Len cuts the call.

He opens up the info tab for Eddie's number, erasing the Bigwig nickname and rechristening it Homber.

* * *

_Second Chance at Life as a Punkfluencer_ , reads the headline of a stupid interview he did while sleep-deprived in — Delaware? He wants to say Delaware. It was by phone, it was dark, it could have been anywhere. The interviewer filled out Len's cliched and meandering replies with a pseudo-philosophical reflection on the commodification of punk and gentrification of road food as filtered through Len's dumb Instagram account. 

According to the piece, Len, confronted with the greying of his hair and beard, decided against becoming an elder statesmen of punk and is now consumed by late-capitalist ennui. All the fight's gone out of him, replaced by a deep hunger he'll never be able to sate. He's catching up to the rest of us, the journalist argues, and it's a fascinating collision

Maybe now Len gets what Eddie was saying about the difference between you and your account.

The article gives the guys more than enough material for roasting Len for another three stops. It's well over a week of this particular bullshit.

"Oh, I'm sorry," Kev says when Len rolls out of his bunk one afternoon, grumbling about the noise of the TV. "Were you trying to sate that deep hunger again?" 

*

Len looks around, thumbing off his phone after having checked his texts and Instagram. They're all shoved into the single dressing room in this shithole club near Raleigh. Jody has one of the waitresses on his lap; they're sharing a beer and whenever she tosses her hair, it sticks to Jody's face. Kevin's talking animatedly to the local sound guy and some younger kids.

Jody catches Len's eye and grins. "Hey, hey, there he is."

"But he's been here the whole time?" the waitress asks, bless her.

"Dude's gone full screen-damage," Jody tells her, like he's confiding in her, but loudly, so Len is sure to hear it. "Just _obsessed_ with the socials."

"It's true," Len says, "my friends live in my phone now. Real life's too full of douchebags and assholes."

"Ha-fucking-ha," Jody yells, then frowns, confused, when the waitress slips off his lap to join Len.

"What's your insta?" she asks, phone at the ready.

He gives it to her, but she makes a face. 

"That sounds like a finsta to me," she pouts.

"This is the one I got," he says and shrugs. "I didn't know there was a 'finsta' account to sign up for." 

"I'm not worth your like, everyday personal account? I'm, like, right here!" 

If he's being honest, his real everyday personal account is his camera roll. Now filled with pictures of a gorgeous walking triangle of a man jacking it and/or asking for it, all in screaming color and saturation, alternating with the occasional old-man dick. Len sighs. 

"That is my everyday personal account," he says. "It's mostly pictures of diner food." 

She makes a mournful noise at that. "My kids won't let me have their 'rinsta' accounts, either. I get it. Not everyone deserves to watch you be normal, right?" 

Behind her Jody is slightly concerned, but trying his best to hide it. 

"I'm sorry," Len tells her. "I don't know what to tell you."

She shakes her head, like he has disappointed her, and heads over to get another drink. Jody mimes a whole interrogation at Len — _what did you **do**? What is your problem?_ — behind her back as he follows.

Len grabs the chance to make a break for it and go back to the bus.

Once he's outside, however, he wants to stay outside. There are calls from peepers in a ditch running behind the club; the sky is overcast, the clouds resembling old-fashioned cotton wool. Len thinks about calling Eddie, but his phone stays in his pocket as he traipses the length of the parking lot. He starts to head down into the ditch, but the slope is steeper than he thought and slippery, so he grabs at the spiny reeds and wild grass to haul himself back up.

For a little while, he sits on the edge of the low metal fence and looks out at the highway. The peepers shriek and chirp.

"Hey," Jody says, joining Len at the far end of the parking lot. He's got his jacket collar up and hands buried in the pockets, arms stiff and straight. "Where're you headed?"

"Nowhere," Len says, standing up. "Just needed some fresh air. Where's your new friend?"

Jody jerks his head to get the hair out of his eyes. He's needed a trim as long as Len's known him, and that's over twenty years at this point. "Had to go home and pay the sitter."

"You and moms, man. You're beyond predictable."

"MILVES, please," Jody replies. "Get it right."

"The Venn is a circle, dude."

Jody snorts and kicks at a clod of dirt. "Maybe."

"Maybe nothing. Maybe definitely." Len knocks their shoulders together and turns for the bus. Jody follows.

"What about you, anyway?" Jody asks as they climb inside.

"What about me?" It's stuffy in here. Len unzips his sweatshirt and flaps the tails.

"Playing celibate?" Jody drops into one of the ugly spinning chairs and spins it around twice. He always does this. He has the personality of a seven year old. "Never thought I'd see the day."

"Nah," Len says as he leans over to unlace his boots. He could almost cry with relief when he frees his feet. "Just hanging out."

"You're always on your phone," Jody says. "That part I wasn't kidding about."

"Like I said, my friends live in there now."

Jody kicks at the carpet. "Asshole."

"Dipshit," Len replies automatically.

This is how they communicate. They've known each other so long that the softer, fuller bits of expression have long since been lost. They're impatient and cranky, pretty much constantly roasting each other, because they don't have to be nice.

"When did we stop being your friends?" Jody asks after a little bit. He has shed his shirt and he's wandering the bus, beer in hand, hunting for his vape.

Len's reclining in one of the lounge seats, feet up, toes wiggling, as he checks his phone. "What? Don't be stupid."

Jody shrugs. In the dim light, he looks especially bloodless and scrawny, the knobs of his shoulders round as pool balls. "Don't tell me what to do."

Len snorts and laughs, shaking his head. "Fine."

"Your name's on the shirts and records," Jody says, lifting his beer, "but no one's the boss of me."

"Noted," Len says, still laughing. "Free as a bird, that's Jody Margolies."

"Fuck yes," Jody says and toasts himself again.

*

It really is weird how easy so many things appear to be now. Back in the day, Len never got that far into photography because he couldn't afford a camera and all the processing costs. Doing it in a darkroom might have saved on processing, but then you were on the hook for renting time or, worse, buying enlargers and chemicals and all that, to say nothing of needing to learn how to do all the darkroom work.

Now, he snaps a picture of Kevin frowning over a hand of cards, plays with some settings for saturation and framing, and he's done. The whole process is unnervingly easy.

That anxiety about ease, however, seems to be built-in. Why else would there be filters that make his pictures look like 1970s Polaroid snapshots, or Ektachrome spreads in _National Geographic_ , or even stills from early-gen camcorders? All the work that goes into making a tiny powerful camera is invisible, just like the expense of it dissolves in the cost of the phone itself. There's a sense that with such ease, you're going to have to borrow the look of authenticity from somewhere else. 

If he thinks about it too hard, Len starts to compare the expressive ease of phone cameras to the rapidity with which he's getting to know Eddie. Eddie is able to take these beautiful, arresting, downright _filthy_ pictures, then send them on, in the time it takes Len to change a guitar string. 

He wonders what it's like to be that good at this, at this bizarre method of getting acquainted where there are no silent cues. You have to say — and _show_ — everything you want to communicate.

The ease of making images collides painfully with the weirdness of building a friendship.

"I'm not saying I'm suddenly Nan Goldin or Martha Cooper," Len tells Eddie one night. Maybe saying them aloud will help him understand his own thoughts. "But the general level of quality is a lot higher than it used to be? Feels like it, anyway."

"But, like —" Eddie exhales and hmms a little. "You're not saying 'easy' makes it worse, right?"

"No, why would I?" Len might still be thinking all this through, but he knows that's far from anything he believes.

"Phones are easy, kids are stupid, nothing's real and meaningful any more. That's the standard line, boomer."

"Not a boomer," Len says off-handedly.

Eddie laughs. "Sure, that's what they all say."

"No, I mean, I'm literally — my _mom_ was a boomer. Born in 48, second child of a vet and the lady he wooed in England. Literally part of the baby boom."

"Well, damn," Eddie replies. "Maybe I'm not as hot for you as I thought."

"Too young, huh?"

"Way too spry, yeah. Call me back when you get the AARP magazine or have to buy a scooter, whichever comes first."

He wants to ask Eddie what the deal is, actually, with the difference in their ages. His attraction to Eddie is far from a mystery: the guy is gorgeous, at a physical peak of age and fitness and just sheer beauty. Len wishes he was that well-defined at 25. More than that, Eddie's funny and smart, as well as a bit strange. Of course he's into Eddie. He looks forward to just talking to Eddie with nearly as much anticipation as the next dirty picture or jerk session. 

The point is that wondering what it could possibly be that Eddie sees in Len is the kind of question that's both as deep and dangerous as an old quarry: jump in, you'll either drown or knock yourself out on the jagged rocks beneath, _then_ drown.

Len is doing a lot of balancing and categorizing these days. Wasn't the road supposed to his break from all of that? No wonder he's having more than the usual trouble articulating his ideas.

"Gonna ask you a question," Eddie says, interrupting this particular gloomy iteration of Len Ponders the Imponderable. "But I don't want you to take it wrong way."

"Shit, okay," Len says. Eddie sounds serious, but not terrifically so. "Hit me."

"How are you just now doing, like, social and pics on your phone and all that? Been around for years."

"I dunno," Len starts, then stops. He doesn't know what to say. He just didn't care before, that's the truth of it. What did all that on-line shit have to do with him, when you got right down to it? They put the label on-line, there's a web store and Bandcamp accounts, but that was about as far as he went. He had other things to do.

Now, though. Now, he cares.

Eddie adds, voice lowering and warming, "Were you living alone out in the woods like some kind of sexass man-bear? Did Canada just get internet last year?" 

"I mean —"

"I hope it's the first," Eddie puts in; Len can just about perfectly picture his smile. "Drag me to your den?"

"Of course," Len tells him. "Ravish you repeatedly, eat our weight in fish, then sleep the winter away?"

Eddie's chuckling as he says, "Sounds perfect."

* * *

"You should come hang this weekend," Eddie says on FaceTime.

Len swallows what looks like half a carton of OJ before he wipes his mouth and replies, "This weekend we're in Kentucky. No, sorry. Tennessee."

Eddie's whine is simultaneously fake and sincere. He really puts his all into it. "Wha-a-at? _Why?_ "

"Tour. It's this strange affair where I'm expected to show up at certain venues on specific dates."

Eddie ignores that as he twists around and draws his legs up behind him, getting more comfortable. "Yeah, but why go _there?_ "

"To Nashville? Yeah, why would I want to go to the heart of some of the best music and music history in the country?"

Eddie pauses, snorts. 

"You're being extra-sarcastic today," he points out.

Len nods, ducking his head. "Crappy sleep, sorry."

"It's okay."

"So I'm allowed to go?" Len asks, teasing. He wishes they were texting so he could use that big-eyed emoji that Eddie likes so much. 

"Yeah, fine." Eddie blows out a slow raspberry. "It's an important location and lucky to have you."

"Aw," Len says. "Thanks, you're too kind."

"Just if you were here I'd be sucking you off in like five seconds. I keep on forgetting to ask when you've been tested last."

"Oh, yeah? Why?"

"Usually I like to swallow."

Eddie watches, satisfied, as Len's brows go all the way up and there's a tip to his shoulders, a little hitch to his breath. 

"Got all of that shit done before the start of the tour. Clean bill of health, all up and down." He coughs into his hand, looks to be catching his breath, and then says, "It'd take you five seconds to get down there, or it would only last five seconds? Because I've actually got _some_ stamina, you know."

"Asshole," Eddie says, "the first one. Obviously."

"I guess if you wanted to test my stamina —"

"Fucking yes I do."

"— that's something I'll keep in mind," Len finishes. He sits back a little ways from the camera and crosses his arms loosely, tilting his head to give Eddie one of those long, quiet looks that rakes away pretense and posturing.

"Don't do me any favors," Eddie shoots back.

The upholstery under Len creaks as he sits forward so fast his face fills the screen in a blink. "Oh, sweetheart. It's no favor."

"Just total selfishness, huh?"

Len's smile tips up at one side, pushing his mustache with it. He sucks in a breath and expels it gustily. "If I say yes, how would you like that?"

Eddie's face is hot and he keeps having to swipe his palms down his jeans. "It'd piss me off," he admits. "But also it's not like it'd be a surprise."

"How pissed?" Len asks. "Like, hanging up now, fuck you deleting your number pissed or more...hot and bothered and kinda bratty pissed?"

Eddie reaches for his water bottle, remembers it's empty, and swallows air. Sense-memories — of kissing Len, of his dick pics, of the hoarse coaxing of his voice the first time they jerked off together — billow up through his mind. It's impossible to think. 

"What's it gonna be, hotshot?" Len asks.

"The second," Eddie manages to say. "But I'm not a brat."

Len _winks_ at him and bites his lip. Eddie feels the rasp of his beard all over his face again. "That's my call, isn't it? Since I'm being so selfish."


	3. Music City

Eddie texts back twelve hours later with the kind of proposition he excels at. The kind that makes Len forget to breathe.  
> _5-sec blowie still on offer_  
> _hot and deep just 4 u_

"Any time," Len writes back. "Say the word."

There's an explosion of happy-seeming emoji, like a New Year's Eve party in miniature, then: > _c u in nashville fri?_

He'll be at the Holston, somewhere Len's never heard of, and tells him to walk up to the front desk asking for Jamie Condon.

> _she won't be there it's just the name for the res_ , and that line alone strongly suggests to Len he's already way out of his depth here. > _they'll call up and I'll get you a key. Use it in the elevator?_

Personal assistants and fake names and swipe in elevators and, hell, hotel-room trysts are hardly what he thought this tour would bring. He takes a cab from Burt's place where the band's shacking up, holding his backpack in his lap like all the suburban dad tourists milling around downtown. He has to pause when it lets him out in front of an Art Deco building that wouldn't be out of place in the Batman cartoon.

Has Eddie ever watched the Batman cartoon? He might not even be aware there was one before all the gritty reboots. He lets the question preoccupy him — it's far preferable to performance anxiety or regular social nerves — all the way from the two-story lobby up to the Jimmy Martin King Suite, and then back down again when he neglects to swipe the card to access the floor.

He is so off the map, plunged right into terra nova. 

"You have a key," Len mutters to himself, turning it over in his fingers. Feels more polite to knock anyway. 

"Not that I know who Jimmy Martin is," Eddie says, opening the door after Len's knocked just once. "But welcome anyway."

Did Len already forget how good he smelled? Eddie clicks the door shut and kisses him hello and, yes, he did forget that, as well as just how slick and sweet Eddie's mouth is.

"King of bluegrass," Len says absently. This place is definitely above his pay grade. Eddie's going to be here one night, but a small family could live here comfortably.

He feels a little like an escort, but who'd pay for _him_?

"Can I take your bag, sir?" Eddie asks, crowding up close to his side. Len had a whole bit for this, something to break the tension, but the bag's slipped from his shoulders easily, put in a nearby chair for later. 

Kissing, they stumble back against the mirror divider between the suite's front room and the sleeping area, and Len realizes that he might just be all right with making out with Eddie for the next eighteen hours.

"You cut your hair?" Len asks, and immediately feels dumb for asking. It's blonde, twisted into finger-lengths and pulled back off Eddie's face. 

"It'll grow back when I leave," Eddie says quickly, and doesn't give very much room between them to explain. "The other style needed a few days off." 

"It looks great, though," Len says and Eddie ducks his head, smiling.

Whatever he's wearing, Eddie looks good, a little too good next to Len in his Dickies and flannel. He looks _composed_ , costumed, and the more Len kisses him, the more he wants to see Eddie like he was in the green room, dishabille and eager.

"What're you thinking about?" Eddie asks him, pushes a twist behind his ear. 

"You," Len says, "I think I got you all figured out." 

Eddie looks at him openly, warm but ready for more, like he did that first night they met. That look does something to Len, not sure what it is or why Len wants to tear into it, please Eddie until he can't do anything else. He tries not to overthink.

It's so good to kiss him again, finally. Kiss him until their lips hurt, until Eddie's clutching and zoned out, swaying into him a little. There's trust here, trust that they'll keep this between them. 

"What's that mean?" Eddie asks, a little breathless. 

"It just," Len pauses, smiles. "Makes sense." 

They kiss again, Len's a little more reserved, and as he pulls away for air he tries to put some distance between them, holds Eddie at an arm's length while undoing the buttons of his jacket. He's got a plan, a rhythm now.

"Can you just," Eddie bites his lip for a second, "tell me what makes sense, dude?" 

There's a mirror there, in the hallway that marks the bedroom from the bathroom and the wardrobe. From where they're standing, it just catches a glimpse of the two of them, just enough that it'll work. 

"It's obvious, is all," Len teases, sliding his fingers under Eddie's jacket, loosening it from his arm as he walks around him. (It's graceful in his head, shut up.) "You like it, don't you? Everybody looking at you, admiring you, _wanting_ you."

"Not like —"

"What about how you came onto me the first night we met? Slinking up, posing like a piece of art, making me _want_ you more and more," Len asks, undoing the zip on Eddie's sweater, slipping his hands inside it from behind. He's looking at Eddie from in the mirror, now, waiting for Eddie to feel it, match his gaze.

Eddie shakes his head for a moment. "That doesn't—"

"You want to be worshipped, bigwig? You want that?" Len's voice quiets down, no acid when he could just have his way. "You do, don't you? What about all those pictures you've sent me, huh?" 

"No —"

"Feels good, I bet," Len continues, lightly. "Bet it feels really good. It's what you've been after, right? What you're expecting?"

"That's not me," Eddie says, level as he finally looks at the two of them in the mirror. "I'm not an _asshole_ , dude."

There's a bit of hurt in those eyes, something that Len doesn't know if he wants to touch. Sure, Eddie's still got the posture of someone who wants to play along, wants to play along so hard it hurts, but there's no telling what's on the other side of that wall. Best to step carefully here, Len thinks. 

He reaches up, clutches Eddie tight, gives him the most romantic kiss he can muster, gentle and sweet and calming, dancing into the heat of Eddie's mouth. 

"You aren't an asshole, not at all," Len says.

"Sensing a 'but', there..." 

"Doesn't take being an asshole to get attention." Smiling, mouth burning to kiss more, Len shrugs. "Not when you look like you do. That's all."

He raises the shirt off Eddie's waist, shrugs him out of it quick. Underneath, Eddie looks like an artisanal Ken Doll, cut definition in his chest and his abdomen, the gaudy V of a torso descending into hips and crotch. 

This isn't about Eddie's body, not really. It's beautiful, sure, stupendous. Len's still not sure if the kid eats food or just survives off smoothies and vitamins. But he'd be lying if he didn't admit to himself he's here for that way Eddie gasps when he gets touched, the way he's almost surprised Len wants him. The way he's electrifying to Eddie does it for him, the fact that he gets to unwrap Eddie, see him at his base or something like it? That's just the bonus. 

There are well fitting jeans to tuck into next, no doubt worth more than the band's party budget for the week. He drops a kiss on Eddie's collarbone, his shoulder, the swell of his bicep. 

"If I had a printer those pictures would be up on my wall. And I bet you have a legion of people, just like me, lining up to give it to you."

"I don't want that." Eddie shakes his head, glances again at the two of them in the mirror, then stares, like it's an anchor. 

"Good." Len smiles. "Because I'm not going to give that to you. I'm not them."

"No, _fuck_ , you're —" He twists and moans as Len undoes the button fly on his jeans, rolling them over that perfect ass. Eddie chokes on his words, as if he's trying to pick himself off the floor of whatever this is. "You're you. Just you. All you."

It's not where Len thought this was going to go, less trash talk than he thought. That's cool, he's making his point. He can see Eddie following him, standing there in his trunks, cock hard under the geometric pattern. There's wetness stretching the cloth over the crown, so blatant they both can see it in the mirror. Everything in Eddie is straining, for movement, for touch, for release.

Len lowers his mouth to the nape of Eddie's neck. "And I know what you want." 

It's obvious, and delicious, how badly Len wants to give it to him, taking Eddie's waist in his hands, yanking him back just a bit. Off balance, Eddie's equal parts confused, miffed, aroused. Len could likely lift him up like this, drag him to bed if he thought his knee would take it. 

"What's that?" Eddie asks, like he wants to be surprised by the answer. 

"You're tired of being adored. That's why you came to me," Len says, hand sliding into Eddie's underwear, feeling the warm heaviness of his erection. In his younger days, Len would have gotten down on his knees and tried to suck the poor kid dry before proceding to fuck him all the way through the mattress. 

But he likes seeing Eddie like this, dazed and so terribly into it, unsure of where to put his hands, unsure of where to put his mouth, unsure of where to put his moans and pleas and the shift of hips that want. He's wet, pre-come starting to slide down his shaft and dampen his shorts. All Len wants is to take his time, pull so slow and light that it takes forever. 

"I'm not going to worship you, Eddie," he says, flat, stroking so slow Eddie's gone somewhere else, wetter yet, leaking all over the palm of Len's hand. "The way you've been laying out, making yourself presentable, no, that's not asking for worship." 

"It's," Eddie sounds like he's trying to ask a question, but his excitability fades during the sentence, "not. _Fuck_." 

Len hmms at that, his other hand coming up to stroke lightly at a nipple, the swell of a pec, the body Eddie's been working so hard for. He holds Eddie close as he crumples just a little further into his arms, shivers of pleasure radiating from Len's hand on his cock, up Len's arm, down Eddie's legs.

"Yeah," Len sighs, nods. "You're hoping I treat myself, right?"

Eddie's hands lift to grasp up at anything he can, finds Len fully clothed and solid, grunts as he can't get close enough. Oh, Len _likes_ how the desperation looks, still polite and restrained and yet not at all as Eddie stares, almost _glares_ , at him in the mirror, pushing into his touch, curling his toes into the carpet. 

"Yeah, I know what a brat like you really needs," Len says. "I'm going to eat you alive." 

He can see the moment Eddie knows he's done playing. No longer petulant, or on edge and ready to be offended, he's instead reeling. It's like Len's served him up a TKO and he's just ready to take that ego bruise right on his leading man chin. 

"Do it," Eddie groans. " _Please_."

And even though it's not how he'd expected to do it, it's easy to take Eddie by the forehead, that hair tickling at his wrist and forearm. It's easy to wrench him back and down onto Len's shoulder, and even though he's expecting a fight, it doesn't come. 

Crumpling even more into Len, Eddie comes hard against him, into his hand, hips pumping.

* * *

Twenty minutes later and Eddie's naked in bed, shivering under a flush. There's Len, still dressed on top of him, holding him still as he works his way down Eddie's stomach. 

"This is so not fair," Eddie says, lightly. 

"Who said anything about being fair?" Len tells him. "I told you, I just know what you want."

He's not wrong: Eddie _does_ want this, wants it all the time. Has been fantasizing about it since day one: the scratch-whisper of Len's beard against his inner thighs, the broad callused hands holding him, how the silver at Len's hairline is going darker with sweat.

This is all so unbalanced. 

He's still really sensitive, getting all the more so as Len licks him with firm, unrelenting strokes and rubs his beard against the wet, overstimulated patches. Eddie's dick bounces and tightens as Len mouths at his balls, then up the underside.

Eddie wants this, but he wants a lot of other things, too. 

"Shit," Eddie says, and his hips buck a couple times before he's pushing Len away, fingers sliding into Len's short silken hair and the heel of his hand against Len's forehead. "Shit, that's good."

"So —" Len coughs a little. "Why're we stopping?"

Eddie runs his fingers through Len's hair, almost absently, as he sits up. 

Len's confidence is magnetizing, and it's so hard to watch some of that defensive posture drain. Eddie's been around tops and self-described doms, been in the presence of a good Daddy or two, but it's something different about how Len lets it drop, eyes a little soft, shoulders rounding. 

"I—" Eddie starts, but falls quiet as he rearranges himself, gets closer. His skin is super-sensitive, smooth and aching against the various textures and weights of Len's clothes — twill and flannel and wool intervening between Eddie and _Len_. 

He slips his hand over the first few buttons on Len's shirt, leaning in, finding Len's mouth again. Breathing together, he slides his hand inside the flannel, finds a dense forest of hair across Len's naked chest. He keeps kissing, lets his fingers pass through the patch, and then starts to grasp, tug until Len's moaning into his mouth. 

So Eddie kisses him harder, twists at the chest hair. After a moment, he pulls away from Len's mouth and lowers his head to bite at the beard hair. 

"Fuck," Len mutters, pulls Eddie closer. 

They kiss again, and it's a very near thing to get lost, the two of them making out like this in the sheets, but Eddie's got something he wants, and needs to get it soon. He reaches down, stroking Len through his pants. It's gentle at first, Len moaning into his mouth. 

He pushes a little further, means it a bit more this time. Len breaks the kiss, sucking for air, rocking into the touch. He's flushed under his beard. His hair is sticking up in the back, he looks so interested in what Eddie's going to do next, sitting there antsy. 

"You should open up," Eddie says lightly, tugging on Len's zipper.

Len looks back and forth, from Eddie's face to his crotch, and back again. 

" _Open_ ," Eddie sing-songs, " _up_."

Len groans when Eddie rolls his eyes and pulls down his zipper. He reaches into Len's briefs, cups him and leans in to whisper, "Still don't get it, do you?"

Len bites his lip and lifts his ass to get his pants down. "Get what?"

"Lie back," Eddie tells him instead and Len does. His dick fills Eddie's hand and then some. The pictures did not, in fact, lie. The surface of the bed shifts when Len tries to sit up to see what's happening. Eddie says again, more firmly, "lie _down_."

"What am I not getting?" Len asks again, then sucks in a hissing breath as Eddie slides his hand up and down the shaft.

"How I know what I want, too," Eddie says, softly.

Len barks out a laugh, shocked. His pants are down around his knees, his shirt half-open and twisted, and his dick — his dick's filling, over-running Eddie's fist. It's good, Eddie's got a plan, Len's about to learn. It's all good. And it's about to get so much better.

"You do, huh?" Len asks. He's still ribbing Eddie, but there's gentle curiosity in his voice, across his face, too. "You sure about that?"

"All those pictures," Eddie says, shrugs, keeps stroking, mouth watering, "those texts. That night. All of it was about this." 

"Need some specifics here, hotshot." Len shudders, however, on the next downstroke. This close, Eddie can smell the sweat off him, the close hot need enveloping them both.

"Specifically? This," Eddie tells him, "and how good I'm going to make it for you."

It's easy to wrap his lips around the head of Len's cock, it's second nature to suck. Len's big enough, perfectly big, that his lips burn a little at the corners. He slicks the shaft with spit, as much as he can, lets his head bobble a few times, a little motion for Len to start thinking about using his hips. 

When he looks up, Len's propped on one elbow, staring at Eddie like he's never seen him before. 

He lets Len go, fall from his mouth, smiles up at him. Reaches over to the bed stand for the lube and a condom from the stash box. 

"You wanna keep your clothes on?" Eddie asks off-handedly. 

"Figure that depends."

"Yeah? On what?"

"What _you_ want," Len says. He seems to be going for "airy", but he sounds slightly too breathless to pull off casual disinterest. "So I've been told, anyway."

Len's trying to play it cool, and Eddie smirks at that, appreciating the effort even though the performance is seriously lacking.

"I mean," Eddie says, then pauses to peel the condom from its wrapper, "I'm not very subtle."

Before Len can reply, Eddie's bending in two, reaching down and sucking at the head and shaft again, getting it sopping wet before rolling the condom down. A moment for lube, a few graceful shifts and reaches to make it easy over the top of Len, and then— 

That first little nudge, that way he starts to stretch, stretch, wider as he swallows Len into him, happens in geologically slow motion.

It's everything he's been waiting for. Worth it, worth the long wait and now the longer stretch, though, because what Len didn't know — what he didn't think to ask — was what happened before he got to the hotel room. He didn't think to make Eddie tell him how he'd made the bed and picked out his clothes and jumped in the shower and took his _time_ getting ready for this, had been good to himself, thorough. 

"I —" Len starts, then grunts, arching his back, driving his head into the mattress. He's a huge, hot pressure inside Eddie, pushing him apart, drawing him in.

Yeah, there'd be some interesting detours here, but Eddie's always known what he ultimately wanted. Priorities, and good strategy. 

"Figured it wasn't smart to send you pictures of how good this hole can be," Eddie notes. "Sorry."

He kneels further down, and further and further, until Len's flush inside of him. It feels like something's being carved into him, and he grinds even further into it, wishing there were nothing between them. Nothing, just flesh stroking flesh, greater heat, deeper touch. A moan tumbles out of his mouth at that thought; he bites into his lip, tests the waters by moving up and down a bit. 

Len looks bowled over, his hips unable to go anywhere pinned underneath. All of Len's bulk and road-muscles mean nothing like this, flat on his back and still fully clothed, his boxers and shirt and jeans just open enough. He'll get Len to open up more later, once he proves to him just how good this is. 

"You know what, not sorry," Eddie continues, fighting to keep his voice level, "I like surprising you."

"Knew it," Len says, screwing up his eyes, fighting to open his legs wider despite his pants in the way, to thrust up. "Fucking knew —"

Eddie grinds good and slow, taking in the sight stretched out below him. There's still the V of chest-hair sticking out from Len's shirt, a rare peek of skin, and he gets his lube sticky hands back into it, then shoves himself back onto that cock. Len's moaning now, clutching at him like he's desperate to roll them both over. 

Eddie slides back down, slower. 

"This is mine," he says, softly. Len's eyes blink open, lids fluttering. "I'm going to take my time with it."

He firms up his thighs, pulls through his abdomen, starts a good rhythm going. Len looks stunned at best, in his own world at worst. 

"You all right with that?" Eddie asks when he has breath enough. He clutches, flutters, around Len's cock to underline the question.

"All the way," Len says. Good to know: that glazed look in his eyes and slack mouth aren't him checking out. They're him getting into it.

Len's hands claw to touch him, the standout in his hips and thighs, like he's needing to take control. It's cute, Eddie thinks as he drags his hole against the bottom third of Len's cock, see-sawing up and down. 

Len's grasp firms on Eddie's thighs, fingers digging in. The tighter he holds, the slower Eddie moves, until they're almost still again.

He thrusts back, every now and then, locking the two of them into place. 

"You're going to have to communicate with me if you want something else," he says, hotly. "I'm fine just like this." 

Even though the condom he can feel Len throbbing and straining, and it's so easy to lean forward, tease a little bit more. 

"I could do this all day, actually. Especially if you're going to rut at me like that," Eddie shrugs. 

He tightens up his muscles again, moves his hips so there's angles and new areas Len hits with every pass, reaching out to explore new areas. He picks up his pace a little, and then a little more, and then as hard and as fast as he can go for a moment.

"Let me take it all, babe," he closes his eyes and says to them both, opening them to see Len desperate to shimmy off his shirt and his pants, desperate to get closer. He holds onto the trunk of Len's body, weighs the idea of holding him down again. 

"Mm," Eddie moans, and shifts his weight just a little. It feels like it could hit the right spot, like that, how Len's straining through his chest and torso while he shrugs out of his shirt. 

The position is a gift, gives him the head of Len's cock rubbing against his prostate, that dreamy hazy pleasure he's been thinking about for forever. He's getting hard again, aching. For a moment he wonders what he looks like, and dedicates himself to riding it out of his head. 

Len's shirt hangs off one arm now, tangling around the hand he's bracing himself up with. Sweat and lube swirl patches of his chest hair darker, flatter. Eddie bears down, tries to roll his abdomen and twitch his thighs, keeps the pleasure scouring up through him.

There's a thick pewter ring in Len's left nipple— _of course there is,_ it's perfect and ridiculous all at once —and he hunches himself forward to press his mouth there. Flick it with his tongue, taste the wiry hair and soft, tightening skin. Take it between his teeth, give a little resistance. 

"Jesus, Ed..."

Len doesn't finish the sentence. Eddie pulls back, spit swinging in a little hammock between the ring and his mouth, and digs his knees into Len's sides and the mattress to shift the angle yet again.

One fist in Len's hair, the other grasping Len's side, Eddie keeps going. He rides the edge of delirium far enough that he doesn't realize he's moaning until he hears himself, wonders what that is, then gradually understands.

"I want so much of this," he says, slows back down. "I want to find new ways to get it. Ones you've never felt before."

"Tough order," Len grits out.

Eddie rearranges himself as he reaches back, folding himself up slightly so he can touch the base of Len's cock, the softer skin at the base of his balls, "How about that?"

Len gasps in surprise, thrusting up a little, and smacks his lips.

"Yeah," Eddie says, satisfied. He presses his thumb against the spot where they meet, where his rim stretches to grip Len's shaft. Len sobs a little, so Eddie rubs there, quick messy circles that gather up the lube. "And this?"

He pauses, and Len's eyes open all the way, and Eddie swallows against the cyclonic heat filling him. 

"I wanna see it," Eddie says, and where is this even coming from, he thinks to himself fleetingly. "I wanna take all of it."

Len's red in the face, fiercely scowling, thrusting raggedly up and up more deeply. "Ed —" he spits and then: " _Please_."

"All yours." Eddie rolls his hips back. 

Len cranes forward, teeth grazing Eddie's arm, and Eddie remembers, nerves lighting up the way, standing naked for him, on display, the mirror doubling his need.

The mirror.

He glances over his shoulder, finds the mirror, and has to arch his back —drive his half-soft dick against Len's lower stomach, grind roughly —at the sight.

"Check it out," he tells Len and flexes around him, drawing up his spine as he rocks back.

He puts a hand down where he can and reorders himself to lift and drop a little bit higher, imagines how he looks, dark brown skin and tense muscles and an ass split open on Len's cock, the full package. 

Without even thinking, Len's hands reach for each cheek of that ass, clutch onto it like he's gonna push in even deeper, cleave Eddie apart with his bare hands. 

"I want to lean back and finger you the next time we do this," he whispers. "I want inside you, too." 

"Fuck," Len groans, sounds like it's so good it hurts. He starts to thrust, deep and deeper again up into him. There's some real power there, Eddie thinks to himself, and thinks about exploring that later. But that's later, he thinks. It's Eddie's show, right now. 

"You keep doing that and I'll stop," he says, smiling in Len's ear. It's likely not a good threat in the position they're both in, so he throws in a reminder of where they're at. "All mine, remember?"

* * *

It's too much. Or maybe, it's just unreal. Or, Len guesses, it's just that he hasn't had sex with another person in forever, especially someone like this, gorgeous and eager to impress, someone this disciplined. 

"I," he gasps, as that hole he's found his way into clenches down onto him again, and even through the condom Eddie's heat has wormed itself into his brain. He tries to relax his hands, spread them out against Eddie's skin, shocked that he gets to touch, that it's real. 

Of course he wants to reach in and take and have, and he tries not to whine or push. But above him, especially close like this, Eddie's intoxicating and beautiful, entirely in control of himself, proud of what he's worked hard for. 

Whether that pride is coming from the sex, or his own body, or the fact that he's doing it with Len, is anybody's guess. 

Len leans into Eddie's side, takes a deep breath of sweat and sex and smoothes his hands down onto Eddie's skin. Eddie smiles on his cheek, brings his face over for their mouths to meet. 

"If you're good," he whispers, like Len can't be patient in this highly aroused state. Or maybe he's talking about something else entirely. "I promise I'll give you everything." 

Len looks up at him and Eddie's cockiness melts away. It's no longer a show of what he can do instead of what he wants from Len, tender and gentle and equal no matter what role they play. 

It's a little different now, like Eddie's reached an understanding of what pleases Len even if he's still talking like he's just in it to show what he can do. Len doesn't mind the dissonance, it can stay sport-fucky if he gets enough touch, enough to look at, enough to feel at every point down the length of his cock. 

Eddie continues to grind deep, lets Len grind back, and they fall onto the bed together in a tangled knot. All of that flexibility Eddie's been teasing him about comes out in the lazy, casual ways his body bends for more leverage, in how he manages to hold Len all over, kiss him and still bounce against him, hips and powerful thighs pleasing them both. 

There must be burn everywhere, Len has a flickering thought. For a moment, he's shy, fluttery, unsure where to put his hands. 

"Hey," Eddie whispers.

Len's fingers dig into Eddie's back, his ass again. "Ed —"

"I want you to come."

Len snort-laughs, deep in his chest, and the reverberations shake into Eddie. "Buddy, I'd love nothing more, believe me."

"I want you to come _for me_ ," Eddie amends, as if the shift in his words are obvious. "On me, for me. In me." 

Eddie pushes himself up onto one elbow. Len works his jaw, blinks, moans. The shift rearranges his hold on Len's dick, makes them both catch their breath; when they realize that, they grin at each other.

"I would," Len says, "if you let me." 

Eddie gives him this dreamy smile, like he's seeing Len from far away. Len hadn't stopped to think how this was affecting Eddie, too. 

He groans, his grip flexing and loosening on Eddie's ass. He shakes himself, hopes it looks like a nod from the outside.

"Let's try something different," Eddie says, simply. 

Breaking apart almost hurts, the way the heat slithers away so quickly, pops free from the top of his cock and leaves him there skittering along the edge. 

"Oof," he huffs out, his cock bouncing back and forth in the air. Eddie had worked him as if orgasm didn't exist in the kid's dictionary, or maybe he was just a quick enough study to know Len's tells. Either way, his brain's leaking out of his ears and he's not sure what's going to happen next and — 

Eddie helps him take his pants and boxers off his ankles, pulls him to the edge of the bed. A light hand shrugs Len free from the condom, too, and he's so sensitive that it's hard not to moan as he lays there. 

"Sit up," Eddie says, "this needs some crowd participation." 

His cock is straining, flushed-maroon and offset from flesh-pale hairy legs and Len's gigantic feet. He spreads his legs wider, tries to avoid seeing his face and how desperate and overwhelmed it looks in the mirror. 

"I want to give you someplace tight to come in," Eddie says, leaning off to the side, licking along the side of Len's cock. He's looking at Len in the mirror, too. His mouth a few shades rosier, more flush with color than Len's flesh, his twists sweat-slick and loose as he pulls and loops Len's wide hand onto the back of his head. A dare, Len thinks, like he's being asked to push. 

"I —" Len croaks, "two seconds from —" 

"You can wait until you're in my throat," Eddie says, confidently, and starts to open himself, tongue and soft palate giving way. By the time Len can manage looking back up to see all of this in the mirror, he's halfway down Len's cock, pushing Len into his throat, and it's _filthy_ and takes _effort_ and is hard not to push down, not to thrust up. His hearing fuzzes out in the overwhelming feel of Eddie's mouth taking his dick. 

The guy has such a beautiful mouth — Len pictures it as he fights back a moan, sees the plush swell of Eddie's lips, imagines them stretching around his dick, then _feels_ them sliding slow and irregular down his shaft. He's breathing faster, a lot more shallowly, as he fans open his legs and lifts his hips, seeking depth, more contact. 

He has to watch. Even though he wants to lie back and get what is shaping up to be a highly accomplished blow job, he needs, even more strongly, to see it happen. His eyes flicking back to the mirror, he sees Eddie's wide brown eyes half-closed in concentration, almost as if he's savoring what he's doing, his cheeks alternately hollowing, then distending, and his lips — his lips look even better than Len'd pictured. They're mauve and cherry-red and _slick_ , sealed tight but mobile. They shine nearly as brightly as Eddie's eyes.

Eddie's watching him back now. He never breaks his gaze; his look is fierce, nearly obstinate, as he takes Len all the way down and groans around him, swallowing fast. 

_Keep watching_ , Len imagines him saying as Eddie's forehead creases and his eyebrows ripple and draw together, _don't you dare look away from me._

And then he's down, all the way to the root, as if he wasn't sure he could do it but Len's stuck in him now, stretching him open in places he doesn't usually go. As if Len could have demanded that, even if he wanted to.

He rocks faster, chasing the breaking point of tension, thinks about emptying himself into that beautiful mouth. Thinks about kissing him — just kissing him! — and feels the wrench in his gut and twist to his balls as his orgasm accelerates. His thighs ache, spread so far, and Eddie's _looking at him_ , and Len's hips jerk and pump before he manages to spit out a warning.

"Ed-," he grits it out and gasps. 

Eddie sucks him down. Eddie _drinks_ him down, murmuring, the sound twirling around Len's dick, slurping, suckling until it's too much to take and Len beats his fist against the mattress and clutches at the back of Eddie's skull, fingers digging deep and finding scalp and soft hair and he lets out a strangled noise that was supposed to be 'please'. 

Everything had been so luxuriously slow and deep, and now it's rushing so fast, time and sensation breaking into shards, and it's so _good_. 

When Eddie lifts off, as Len softens, he sees their reflection again, all disarrayed limbs and come-smeared lips. He pants for breath, closing his eyes and resting his forehead against the breadth of Len's thigh; he has to wait for his body to come back to him.

"Fuck," Eddie says, laying there and catching his breath. His voice sounds fucked-through, ruined, and God that's more of a turn on than it should be. 

* * *

He is in his glory, exactly where he's wanted to be for such a long time. 

Eddie has to wait for his body to come back to him. He can't quite remember how to breathe but goddamn what a _good_ way to go. Empty and stretched at both ends, used just right, he's lying against the edge of the bed like he's never going to be able to get up. It's _amazing_. 

Len pats Eddie's head with a clumsy hand. "You okay down there?"

Eddie looks up and smiles. His face is so well-fucked that it hurts to smile. It hurts _so_ good, renews the ache and burn and sends a shiver right down his spine.

"Hell, yeah," he manages to say, then puts his head back down, using Len's knee as a knobbly pillow.

Eventually, he does get up with a little help from Len, and makes for the shower. Then he thinks better of it, and runs a bath instead. He sweeps the twists off the back of his neck and tries to tie them together with the longest one he has, but thinks better of it. He wraps a towel around his hair, lest Lana kill him when he gets back, and slides down into the steaming water.

"You —" Len stops short in the doorway. "Sorry."

The towel-turban makes a decent pillow, so Eddie closes his eyes again and waves Len inside. "No worries, do your thing."

When Len doesn't reply, Eddie opens his eyes to see him still standing there, locked in place.

"There's a bidet," Eddie tells him. "Unless you want to share the tub?"

"Probably make a mess," Len says after a long pause. "I can shower over in the corner, there." 

"Which could also make a mess," Eddie singsongs. Len frowns at that for a minute, and stops. Before Len can sink all the way into whatever he's feeling, Eddie splashes the water softly and holds his gaze. "Get in, I promise it won't melt you."

Len cough-laughs into his hand and moves forward. "You look like fucking Eartha Kitt but jacked right now, you know that?"

"That," Eddie says, sitting forward so Len can slide in behind him, "is probably the nicest thing anyone's ever said to me."

"Good, because it was a compliment."

They do splash, a lot, as Len gets into the water, but it's worth it, because then he's drawing Eddie back to lean-slash-float against his chest. Somehow the water stays good and warm, long enough for them both to soap up and then soak, for Eddie to twist around and try to kiss Len. Wet beard, aching mouth, perfect.

"Someday, you need to tell me the story of this —" he says, tugging on the nipple ring.

"Not much to tell, though."

"So make up a good story, then."

Eddie's whole body is _elastic_ , quivering and replete, after they get out of the tub and order room service. He can't remember the last time he felt this good for nearly this long.

* * *

Eddie's voice still sounds shot about 45 minutes later, and it's still more of a turn on than it has any right to be, the kind of thing that gives Len chills. 

"You clean so I can return the favor?" Len asks him, knows it's a dumb question this late. 

"Last testing date was about a month before we met. Hadn't been trying with anybody since then," Eddie croaks. "I like playing dangerous, but not like that, dude."

They eat, overpriced hotel hot chicken and almond flour biscuits and a bottle of pricey bourbon poured into hotel quality 'crystal' glasses on the rocks. Sitting and watching an old episode of _Mad About You_ , Eddie knows way more about Hank Azaria's career than seems humanly possible. Len thinks about asking, there are still so many questions but all of them just don't seem important right now, not sitting in this too-comfy bed he'll have to eventually leave. 

"Eating me alive," Eddie says at a commercial, "that still on the table?"

Len, in the middle of taking a swig of bourbon, chokes a bit and hastily wipes his mouth. 

"Table," Eddie adds, snickering, and points at the debris of their room-service meal. "Dining table, get it?"

"Christ almighty." Len shakes his head, rubbing his chin through his beard. "I can't believe I just fucked you."

"Believe it, old man." Eddie puts his hands behind his head and gives him the world's cockiest grin. "I'll have you know, my wordplay is even better and hotter than my swagger."

"I don't know _shit_ ," Len says.

Eddie just leans over and dips his finger into the puddle left by Len's hot sauce and ranch mixture (as if the chicken wasn't hot enough). A creamy white with a swirl of orange, he sucks it clean, slowly, thoroughly. 

"You know, for a guy that seems to be so against seeming like an asshole, you're one hell of a brat," Len observes.

"An asshole's selfish," Eddie says. "Self-centered. That's not — I'm not about that. Don't want to be."

"And a brat?"

Eddie makes a face, like he just bit down on a lemon. "I mean. Playful? Where's the harm in that?"

"Playful," Len repeats. It's not inaccurate, but it's not a word that would have occurred to him, either.

"You seem to like it more?" Eddie shrugs. "I do, too." 

Outside, the window shows the bluish haze over downtown, about as dark as a city can ever manage to get. Len wonders for a moment if anyone back at Burt's has realized he's gone. He decides to play it smart and text Jody quickly.

He tries a couple different phrases before settling. "Bumped into an old friend, staying over at his place tonight."

_Yeah bro we noticed. hope you're getting wrecked!_

Len can almost hear the cat calling from the guys now. Whatever, Eddie's worth it, and if whatever this is passes for discreet then saying he bumped into a friend does, too. 

"Got you something, by the way." Len changes the subject, reaching into his backpack for the shirt he bought at the first gift shop he passed. "So you won't forget what Nashville is."

It's a cheap thing, retro orange and red sun underneath bubble letters spelling out _Music City_. 

"Ooh," Eddie plucks it out of his hand and fits it over his head, careful to not muss up his hair. It's tight on him; Len didn't have the foresight to check if he bought a ladies' medium. 

Len expects Eddie already knows how much he appreciates a tight shirt on him. Eddie keeps his eyes on Len while he bites his lip and flexes a little. 

"Good find, thanks for not choosing 'Bachelorette Town USA,'" he jokes. "Thanks." 

Sitting there without pants, watching Helen Hunt meal-mouth another sitcom joke, Eddie looks like a dream Len would have in the middle of his REM cycle, when his subconscious floats and mishmashes images together trying to make sense of the world. The surrealism isn't frightening, definitely not off-putting. It's _cozy_ , which might be the most surreal element of all.

"Ooh, you came ready for a sleepover," Eddie says, lightly, as he looks into the rest of the bag. "Look at you, all prepared." 

He can't be that impressed by, what? Change of underwear, some shirts and a book, a sketchbook with a pen doubling as a bookmark. Frowning, Len leans over and checks whatever it is that's making Eddie smirk.

Fucking Jody and Kevin and their idea of "pranks".

Len refuses to be embarrassed _now_. The time to get embarrassed was way before this. "What?" Len asks, taking the bag back. "Doesn't everyone travel with an eleven inch dildo and enough Boy Butter to moisturize a small city?" 

"I meant the change of clothes, like you knew were staying out tonight," Eddie replies and kisses him again, spicy and sweet. "It's hard to get lube through the TSA, frankly."

He hasn't been as discreet as he believed, but maybe it's okay as long as they don't know _who_ he's going to see. That is, however, a thought for another time. Just now, he's got Eddie climbing into his lap, twining his arms around his neck.

*

"So I am staying over?" Len remembers to ask later. They're still on the couch, draped across each other, talking quietly, as stripes of light from the traffic below chase each other across the ceiling. The television's shining but muted.

"Your call," Eddie says.

"I've had a lot to drink." He feels heavy, but that's more than the bourbon. He also feels warm and loose, like he's missing a couple key joints. He squints into the dark. "Don't want to move."

Eddie doesn't say anything for a little while. Then, from closer than Len had thought, he says, "Assumed-slash-hoped you were staying over. No pressure though."

"No pressure," Len echoes.

How did he used to do this? He must have had moves; people said he had moves. All he remembers about staying over, though, are dumb things. He got to stay by passing out, probably. Or, much more frequently, he _didn't_ want to stay, so he'd simply go. Not let it be a question, never stick around to see the topic raised.

This is different, and not just because he's fucking old and pretty drunk.

"I snore a lot and steal pillows," Len says when the quiet starts getting to him. "You don't really want me to stay, believe me."

"Does that bullshit work on anybody?" Eddie leans in. "Your technique could use work." 

"My technique?" Len asks. 

"Your obnoxious contrarian shtick." Eddie wriggles closer. 

"My what?"

"Relax, it's not like a bad thing," Eddie says, sounding half-sincere in his soothing. "You, like, get all grumpy and curmudgeonly and by the time you're done, whoever was bugging you gives up and goes away. Or is properly seduced and just begs you to stay the night."

He's not wrong, but it does feel strange being called out so thoroughly. Len swallows. "Sound pretty sure of yourself, hotshot."

"I am. Besides, the beard does most of the work," Eddie says. "You just have to frown and I bet most people back off."

Len laughs, deep in his chest. "I don't know about that."

When Eddie finger-combs the nearer side of Len's beard, slowly and gently, the touch sends little waves of relaxation across Len's body. "What'd you do before the beard?"

"Hmm?"

"How'd you push people away?"

"Oh." Len stares upward, willing Eddie to keep touching. "Generally just disappointed them. Gravely and fatally, or a little bit by bit over time. Same result in the end."

Eddie nudges closer. His hand drifts down to Len's chest, to toy with the hair there. His forehead against Len's temple, his voice low enough to be just air, he says, "Going to disappoint me?"

"Oh, yeah," Len tells him. "Surprised I haven't already."

Maybe he has. The process is probably already underway; they just haven't noticed yet.

"And what about if they just want to come closer?" Eddie asks.

"They'll still be disappointed eventually." Len shrugs slightly. "But I won't stop them." 

Eddie makes a noise at that, and continues cuddling in like he wants to merge. 

Bourbon is a _bitch_.

It's almost easier if he just yields, and holds Eddie tighter.

* * *

They fall asleep on the couch, almost. 

"How much did this room cost, anyway?" Len asks. 

"Hotel points and ambassador status, mostly," Eddie lies. "I live out of hotels for a good part of the year, remember?" 

He doesn't actually know the cost of this room. Maybe he'll learn it when he gets back to New York. It depends on if Condon's the kind of person who wants to keep him humble or prefers him not knowing the cost of things (or how good a negotiator she is). 

"Well, then if it's all the same to you," Len says, "can we sleep in the ambiguously expensive bed?" 

Eddie laughs at that, and gets to his feet. He reaches back, offers a hand to Len. Even though the guy doesn't need it, he takes it anyway, and lets Eddie lead him to bed. 

Len falls asleep almost instantly, but Eddie resists following.

Maybe it's getting fucked, eating well, getting off-set and to a city where the sun knows how to shine: lots of factors, all adding up to one psyched guy.

If Eddie's being honest with himself — and why not? Who's going to know? — that satisfaction and contentment that are clearing his mind and making him smile in the dark derive directly from just this — sharing this bed. 

He never realized just how good he'd feel, getting to enact this kind of mundane, unremarkable closeness. He hasn't actually ever shared very much of this intimacy, not for years, and never for any length of time that mattered.

Len is grumpy and closed-off, kind of an asshole when he wants to be, though never as off-putting as he probably thinks he is. For a curmudgeon, he is also remarkably _skittish_ , emotionally, as well as way older than Eddie. All that said, he fits. Physically, inside Eddie, alongside Eddie, as well as temperamentally and emotionally. Eddie's always thinking about him in some way or other, like Len's presence has pulled up a chair to witness, occasionally challenge, Eddie's thoughts.

Eddie would miss him terribly if he went, that's for sure.

He reaches for the fabric on the nightstand, gathers his hair and slides it over the top, tying it closed on both ends. Even in the low light, he's acutely aware of time passing and ticking down to morning when they'll have to go their separate ways again. There's a superstitious, immature part of him that thinks if he can't _delay_ that moment, he can at least experience its approach. 

Not that he's all that sure what the experiencing can do, beyond make him antsy and, frankly, a little cranky.

Still, it's a good kind of cranky to be feeling. Eddie will take this over feeling annoyed by Trevor Nottingham or exasperated by Blaine the Make-Up Dude any day. Those reactions are just more grist for the mill of Shitty On-Set Feels, but this crankiness comes out of satisfaction and contentment. 

He knows it's from the extremely good sex, combined with cheating on his diet and running a nerfed version of his full workout, but he feels _right_ for the first time in a long while. His mind is his own again and he's seeing, thinking, with such clarity that it's almost exhilarating.

Len's body is really warm against Eddie's. He sleeps soundly, barely moving at all except to occasionally smack his lips.

* * *

In the morning, his head hurts and his thighs hurt and all Len wants to do is stay with his face pressed against Eddie's shoulder. Eyes closed, mouth open, arms tight.

He can't, though. 

Eventually he gets up, showers, and starts getting dressed. Room service coffee arrives, accompanied by Ezekiel bread and tiny egg bites. 

"Condon tells everyone I'm gluten free," Eddie pauses, naked and glorious, holding a mug of black coffee. "As if it's gonna help me make better carb decisions." 

Len doesn't know what to say to that. Eddie's sitting in a chair next to the open window, the city stretching out in front of him. He tilts his head back and smiles at nothing in particular.

"You all right over there, hombre?" Len drinks down his coffee, unable to look away from Eddie, glazed in sunlight, blissing out.

"Miss the sun," Eddie tells him. "Miss it all the time."

Len snorts softly. "There's sun in other places than LA."

Eddie nods, "That, my friend, is true. Or so I've heard. It just hasn't been in my life consistently for a while."

Len grabs his bag to get dressed.

After a few beats of fiddling with his head wrap, Eddie's hair breaks free, like even it needs sun. 

Eddie suggests, "Stay longer? You should stay longer, my flight doesn't leave until midday."

"Wish I could," Len says, bending to pull on his socks.

"C'mon, man! You don't play for well over twelve hours!"

Len glances over, surprised. He's certain that Eddie's being ridiculous on purpose, but if so, he really is a good actor. "Are you _whining_ right now?" 

"Little bit, yeah." Eddie flings out all his limbs, careful not to spill the coffee in his hand. "Just sucks that you have to go when you don't, actually, _have_ to go. You know?"

Len looks around for yesterday's boxers and shirt, but they must be in his bag already. "That's almost poetry."

"Stay," Eddie makes it into a jingle to the tune of the old Meow Mix ad: "stay, stay, sta-a-yyyyy, you wanna stay, Eddie's ass is so delicious."

"Bus waits for no man," Len tells him, tugging his sweatshirt over his head.

"Can I come on the bus, then?"

"Uh?" The grommets for the string around the hood catch on Len's glasses, and he's temporarily blinded. "What? Why?"

Eddie lifts Len's glasses free and gently eases the hood all the way down. He's gazing steadily, lower lip caught in his teeth, and the expression he's making is simultaneously soft and inscrutable. It's also, Len realizes, the physical manifestation of that emoji Eddie likes to use, with the big hopeful eyes.

"We could hang longer, obviously," Eddie says. Is it obvious? Len's not sure. "I'll switch my flight. I can fly out of Atlanta just as easy as here, right?"

"Maybe, I don't really know what's a hub, whether you'd need to go to Buffalo or what…." Len trails off. Eddie still regards him quietly. "You don't want to get on the bus, believe me."

"Why not?"

"It's depressing and, frankly, deeply gross," Len tells him. "It's like David Lynch locked you in the lobby of a second-rate Atlantic City casino. Forever."

Laughing, Eddie has to steady himself with a hand on Len's arm. "Can't be that bad."

"Pretty sure the upholstery alone would give you contact dermatitis," Len says. "Best case scenario. Worst? Who knows."

"Sure."

"I'm serious. You're really —" Len has to pause and grin. "Your skin's way too soft."

"It's called exfoliation, Neanderthal."

What would they even do on the bus? Jody and Kevin would play it cool, Len knows that, biting their tongues in order to give him _all_ the shit later. It's hard to picture Eddie just plopping down and playing Parcheesi with them, let alone joining the endless Hearts marathon.

As soon as that thought takes place, however, Len understands that it is something he's telling himself has to be true. It isn't true, however; it's a total lie. Eddie would probably love a board game. He'd charm the pants off Kevin and take forty straight tricks in Hearts, trade weird anime facts with Jody, be the belle of the ball.

Eddie's not the problem, never was.

"Bus smells like decades of dudes and smoke and god knows what else," Len continues. Their hands find each other and their fingers lace up. "Frustrated ambition and piss."

"You're making it all the more tempting, you know," Eddie says lightly, as they keep wrapping themselves together in each other, standing there. "How can I possibly keep myself away now?"

"Maybe," Len says, taking a slow breath, wishing it would blow away all the _shit_ that clogs his brain, "some other time."

"No time like the present," Eddie murmurs.

This whole thing is crazy enough. He's already daydreaming, before he can stop himself, about smuggling Eddie onto the bus. He can see it, but he can also _feel_ it, what it would taste and smell and _be_ like.

He squeezes Eddie's hand.

Whatever he might say is inadequate to everything he's feeling.

He doesn't want to go. He wants to stay here, exactly here, with Eddie, in this particular moment. He wants time to stop, he wants to put down roots in this luxurious carpet, he wants to stop breathing, turn to implacable stone. Departure is not something he's about to _do_ so much as it is an event, outside his control, hurtling towards them.

"Oh, yeah? You'd have to work for your keep," Len says, rather than any of that.

Eddie tips up his chin. The sunlight catches the ends of his lashes and dazzles. "I know hard work."

With the back of his hand, Len touches the curve of Eddie's cheek, the soft perfect skin there. Eddie starts to frown; Len cups his cheek and kisses him. 

"I know you do," he adds. "Sorry."

It feels like he has to get away for a moment, like he's being infected by an intimacy he was expecting never to have again. It's not real and yet it is, like one day it won't just be hotel rooms and kinky texts. Like one day it's going to be Len telling people Eddie's gluten free. 

Shit. 

"I'm glad you came," Eddie offers.

They're reduced to guessing their lines as they inch through this awkwardness.

"Thanks for —" Paying for all this, but Len stops himself from saying that. It's more than booking the flight and the hotel. "Thanks for inviting me."

"I'm glad we did this," Eddie says after a long pause. "Think it was good for us."

"Us," Len says.

Arching one eyebrow, Eddie gives him an especially cocky grin. It challenges Len as much as it mocks him, as much as it warms him. The expression, however, shifts, modulates, the longer Eddie looks at him. It dims, softens, goes secret and fond, and as it does, Len's chest thumps emptily.

"Yeah, _us_ ," Eddie replies. He's still slightly hoarse. "That's what I said. Deal with it, old man."

"You are such a brat." Len ducks his head, nodding. "You want me to hold hands with you at the mall, is that it?"

"I prefer 'good strategist', if you're going to keep calling me names, thanks," Eddie grins, as he kisses Len's cheek. "And no, I don't give a shit about that when I can have this. Y'know, _us_." 

"Well, if you're that much of a stickler for grammar." It hurts to step back, step away. "All right. Will do, us."

Eddie goes soft and glowing in ways that Len can't explain yet.

He wants to tell Eddie that there are reasons why he's kept to himself for the last while, wants to share all the ways he's kind of not great. Wants to ruin it, right now, so that it doesn't get ruined later. 

But he doesn't. 

His ride's going to be here any minute.

"Have a safe flight, okay?" 

Eddie nods, and Len turns to walk out the door. 

While in the uber, his phone buzzes in his hands. 

> _getting excited 4when i can c u agn_

"You just saw me 10 minutes ago!" 

> _...  
>so?_

On the car ride back to the guys, the movie in his head plays on, easier to watch than anything actually happening: Jamming with Eddie on guitar, kissing him in the narrow bunk they'd never fit in together, drinking coffee in truckstop diners at 3 in the morning, fucking him nice and slow as the sun hovers over the horizon. Like running away, but toward something, someone.


End file.
